3 Digital Marketing Channels That Work for Every Advertiser

As an advertiser, your core objective is to prioritize investment in relevant communication channels that deliver maximum returns for your business. With plenty of studies proving digital marketing ROI, it makes perfect sense to leverage digital channels for promoting your brand and its products and services.

But with so many online advertising channels available, how do you go about picking the best channel for your business? You must do a fine balancing act between your advertising budget and the costs of using a particular channel. Here are three digital channels that will allow you to make the most of your advertising budget:

1. Google AdWords.

With a lion’s share of PPC market (roughly 67%), the use of Google AdWords is a no brainer. There are plenty of businesses that have driven traffic to their site, marketed their products/services and ultimately increased sales by leveraging Google AdWords.

I know there are some business owners who stay away from PPC because they believe it eats into a large portion of their marketing spend. Unfortunately, they are making a big mistake. AdWords delivers measurable results and is worth the investment. Your ads get viewed right when your target audience is searching for the products/services you are selling. The results are faster than SEO, and you can also set a budget for your campaign, which allows you to control your advertising costs.

Add to that a collection of features like Ad Customizers, Call Out Extensions, Google AdWords Editor, HTML 5 Ads and you have a channel that helps deliver a marketing message the way your audience wants to hear it. What’s more, you can even identify if and when an ad leads to an offline sale. That’s a huge advantage.

The great thing is there are plenty of tools you can use to optimize your returns from Google AdWords. These range from Bidable, which offers quick automation and real-time bidding with no minimum spend for small businesses to Kenshoo, an enterprise-level tool that automates your AdWords workflow and allows you to make bulk changes to your campaigns.

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Bing Revamps Mobile Home Page Adding Swipe Up For Popular Topics & Settings

Bing deploys a "significant redesign" to their mobile homepage.

Bing announced that they’ve completely redesigned their home page for mobile users on iPhone and Android devices. Bing calls this a “significant redesign” of their mobile home page.

Besides for quick searching capability, the interface is now swipable up and down, as you swipe, you unlock the ability to see the home page image details, the “popular now” topics and access to your Bing accounts, rewards summary and much more.

Here is an animated GIF of the new home page:

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Microsoft & Getty Images Announce Partnership & Drop Infringement Lawsuit Over Bing Images

On Monday, Getty Images dropped their lawsuit against Bing Images and on Tuesday they signed a new partnership deal with Microsoft.

In September 2014, Getty Images sued Microsoft over alleged massive copyright infringement through the Bing Image Widget. Shortly after, Microsoft pulled the Bing Image Widget offline.

Today we learn via The Seattle Times that Getty Images dropped the lawsuit against Microsoft on Monday and yesterday announced a new partnership deal with Microsoft to “develop next-generation image rich experiences.”

The deal reads:

Getty Images, the global digital media company, and Microsoft today announced a new partnership to develop image-rich, compelling products and services for Microsoft products like Bing and Cortana using Getty Images’ world class imagery. In the coming years, the two companies’ technology teams will partner to provide real-time access to Getty Images imagery and associated metadata to enhance the Microsoft user experience.

“With our new partnership, Microsoft will use Getty Images’ latest API innovations and our award-winning visual content to take search experiences to a new level,” Getty Images Senior Vice President of Business Development Craig Peters said. “Our technology teams will work together to create beautiful, engaging applications and services for Microsoft users with licensed content and attribution for photographers and other content creators.”

“This collaboration enables Microsoft users to take full advantage of Getty Images’ speed to market, structured metadata and unrivaled content,” Microsoft Executive Vice President of Business Development Peggy Johnson said. “We look forward to working with Getty Images to provide the next generation of image depth and breadth for our users.”

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iPhone 7 in 2015: Apple 'may abandon iPhone 6S'

Analyst says Apple may tear up its regular product launch schedule and go straight to the iPhone 7 this autumn

Apple is drawing up plans to skip a generation, launching the iPhone 7 a year ahead of its expected arrival, according to an industry analyst.

Under the company's usual launch schedule, last year's iPhone 6 would have been followed by an iPhone 6S this year. But Ming-Chi Kuo, an analyst at KGI Securities, says the new phone will introduce significant new features – prompting Apple to break with convention and call it the iPhone 7. 

According to Kuo, whom MacRumors says "has a respectable track record at reporting on Apple's upcoming plans", Apple will introduce Force Touch – a technology it developed for the Apple Watch – on this year's new iPhone, and then update it in 2016.

Force Touch can differentiate between light taps on a touchscreen and longer, harder pressure. That would allow Apple and independent app developers to add new software features, in theory making the iPhone 7 more efficient to use.

It was introduced for the Apple Watch, whose small display puts a premium on efficient controls, but the system will apparently be adapted for use on the larger iPhone screen.

"We believe that iPhone’s Force Touch sensor doesn't directly detect the pressure applied by fingers," Kuo wrote in a note to investors. "Instead, it monitors the contact area on which the finger touches the screen to decide how big the pressure is." 

AppleInsider reported last month that Apple had planned to build Force Touch into the iPhone 6, but removed it after technical difficulties. It too predicted that the next model, which it called the 6S, would make use of the technology. 

Now, however, Kuo suggests that the introduction of Force Touch "may be significant enough for Apple to call its next iPhone the iPhone 7", MacRumors reports – a move that would consign the iPhone 6S to history before it was even unveiled.

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Google purges bad extensions from Chrome

Tens of millions of users who visit Google sites use a browser loaded with malicious add-ons, research suggests.

Most rogue extensions bombard people with ads, but the most malicious steal login names and other valuable data.

Carried out by security experts and Google, the project analysed more than 100 million visits to the search giant's sites.

It led to Google purging almost 200 bad extensions from its online catalogues of browser add-ons.

Bad behaviour?

Extensions and add-ons for web browsers add all kinds of functions and features to the software.

Many of these extensions have hidden extras that cause trouble for people who install them, said UC Santa Barbara computer scientist Alexandros Kapravelos, who worked with Google on the rogue extensions project.

The research found that malicious extensions were available for every major browser.

The findings are due to be published in full in May at the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy.

Preliminary results revealed that 5% of people accessing Google every day have been caught out by at least one malicious extension.

Of these victims, about a third have four or more bad add-ons installed in their browser.

"It is a very hard problem to deal with," said Mr Kapravelos.

Some bad extensions were easy to spot, he said, because they were so obviously written to steal saleable data such as bitcoins, bank logins or personal data.

However, many used techniques seen in legitimate extensions, he said, and it took a lot of extra analysis to pin down the bad ones.

"Even when we have a complete understanding of what the extension is doing, sometimes it is not clear if that behaviour is malicious or not," he said.

"You would expect that an extension that injects or replaces advertisements is malicious, but then you have AdBlock that creates an ad-free browsing experience and is technically very similar."

Experts from Swedish security firm ScrapeSentry said it had found examples of extensions that gathered data in ways that could easily be abused.

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Facebook Post Search Is Finally Coming To Android Devices

Facebook's updated search product was launched for iOS, web and mobile web in December. It's still only available for users of the U.S. English language setting.

Android users, left out when Facebook launched its revamped search product in December, are finally being included. Late last night, we received a notification on an Android phone that it is now possible to find posts that have been shared in the social network.

Today, a Facebook spokesperson confirmed that the rollout on Android has begun, and that it would continue in the coming weeks.

In December, Facebook rebranded Graph Search as Facebook Search on the web, mobile Facebook site and iOS devices. It’s only available for users using the U.S. English language setting.
Facebook Search gives users the ability to search within posts shared with them, by friends and pages that they follow. Facebook said in December that the search-within-posts functionality was users’ top feature request during nearly two years of testing of Graph Search. They were less interested in being able to search within all public posts, which had been the original plan.

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iOS 9: Possible New Features

What should Apple choose to include in its forthcoming iOS 9 mobile operating system?

Before the release of the new iPhone model later this year, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) will first release a new iOS 9 operating system. This is always an important aspect of any calendar year for Apple, as iOS is very much the foundation on which its mobile devices are built. This is, of course, as well an acclaimed piece of software, delivering a slick packages for the iPhone series which has led to it being a market-leading smartphone.

But what improvements can Apple make in iOS 9? Here are some suggestions for features that Apple fans would like to see included in the software.

iOS 9 Features:

Homescreen

The Android operating system certainly has its fans, and Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) has worked hard to close the gap on iOS in recent years. One area that it has dealt with extremely well is that of the homescreen, which can appear a little cluttered on an iPhone. So Apple should look to improve the layout of the homescreen when iOS 9 is released.

Themes

Another criticism of iOS, and indeed Apple in general, is that it is not customizable enough. One example of this is the fact that the iOS operating system gives users very little choice in terms of themes. Apple could make a step forward with iOS 9 by offering users the opportunity to effectively wind back iOS 9 to an earlier layout of the operating system, as well as offering skins and themes with the software.
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Microsoft at 40: Read Bill Gates' anniversary email to employees

The world's largest software maker hits a milestone Saturday. Read its co-founder and former CEO's letter to employees asking them to remember the transformative properties of technology.

Forty years ago, the world's largest maker of software was nothing more than a startup, founded by two college dropouts named Bill Gates and Paul Allen.
Today, that company, Microsoft, has more than 125,000 employees, a sprawling 8-million-square-foot campus outside Seattle and its principal products running on nearly 90 percent of the world's computers. It's the third-most valuable company in the world, behind only oil giant Exxon Mobil and longtime competitor Apple.
On Saturday, Microsoft celebrates its 40th anniversary and Gates -- who served as chief executive officer for 25 years before stepping down in 2000 -- has advice for its employees to utilize in the years ahead: "Make the power of technology accessible to everyone, connect people to each other and make personal computing available everywhere."
In an email to employees Friday, Gates reiterated his commitment to the vision he laid out four decades ago that software could empower the world, and asked Microsoft never to forget what it can do to change lives. "What matters most is what we do next," he wrote.
 Gates, who has since pulled away from Microsoft yet remains an adviser to CEO Satya Nadella, focuses now on philanthropic efforts as co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. His personal fortune has kept him at the top of the list of the world's wealthiest people 16 out of the last 21 years, but he's pledged to give away 95 percent of it to charity by his death. So far, Gates has poured $28 billion into his foundation.
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Driver Education School Integrates Google Street View With Online Test Preparation

The Automobile Club of Romania is creatively using technology to help those studying to get their driver's license.

Working with Publicis Bucharest, the Automobile Club of Romania (ACR), a driver education school, recently launched Street View Test.
Street View Test is a Google Street View-powered online road test drivers can use to prepare for their real world driver’s test. It taps the Google Street View database to display actual road situations along with related test questions that drivers will face when they take their exam.
In addition, those taking the test can identify confusing traffic situations seen on Street View maps, and ACR will turn those situations into questions that can be used to help educate drivers.

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SEO Lead Generation – A Growing List Of New Strategies & Tips

It doesn’t matter if you are just starting out as an SEO consultant or if you are already an established agency looking to grow – leads are the holy grail for the growth of any business. There are dozens of strategies, tricks and tools that can help you identify new leads for your SEO consulting business.

The objective of this article is to comprehensively cover all the strategies and tools to find new SEO leads. But in case it doesn’t cover a trick or strategy you personally use, feel free to comment or message me and I shall add your trick or tool to the list.

This is the first place you should start. Freelance marketplaces like Freelancer.com, Odesk, and Elance have hundreds of small and large businesses seek bids for their SEO projects. It gives you are a ready list of businesses who are ready to spend money NOW to improve their search engine profile.

There are, however, a couple of downsides to this – for one, depending on where you live, you may find that the rivals bidding for the same projects are grossly undercutting you. That is expected considering that Asian and East European bidders often price themselves lower than American bidders.

Also, such marketplaces have ratings and reviews for providers which are often an influential factor among buyers. As a new user, you may face the prospect of being rejected due to zero reviews.

Trick to success : Do not bid on each and every project. Instead, identify websites that you think you can win, and write a personalized note that is probably much more detailed and actionable than other bidders out there. If the project owner has provided a link to their website or has specified the industry/location, make a thorough analysis of the industry or website and make a grand pitch on why you are the best person to do the job. The conversion rate for such bids are vastly higher than using a cookie-cutter bidding template for all projects.

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Dell At MarTech Conference: Customer Experience Must Drive Marketing Technology Decisions

Corey Craig explains how Dell created its Solutions Nurture platform to provide content at pain points in customer journey.

If there’s been one overarching theme at the MarTech conference, it’s the need for marketing technology (and the marketers that use it) to focus on the customer first. Speakers from major brands like Coca-Cola and Kimberly-Clark, along with those from smaller digital agencies, have almost universally emphasized a customer-centric approach to using marketing technology.
Dell’s Corey Craig continued that focus with her presentation Wednesday morning that explained how she helped develop an “always on” marketing program that the company calls Solutions Nurture.
Craig, the Customer Experience Design & Innovation Lead at Dell, said the project began by mapping out an entire customer experience that looked for all the different touch points that a consumer might have with Dell, and identified the customer’s intent at each point.
“Let the experience drive technology decisions,” Craig said, explaining that Dell is using seven systems to manage how it reacts to customer intent.

Dell’s Content Framework

Once the customer experience had been mapped out, Dell began to work on creating a content framework based on providing the solutions that the customer needs.
Dell uses logic to drive personalized content to match the customer’s pain points. “This is your ‘If X, then Y’ system,” Craig said.
Craig began writing out this content framework by hand and, by starting manually, learned where the company had opportunities to use marketing automation. “Don’t be scared of the manual work,” she told the audience, “it will teach you what to automate.”
The final step in Dell’s development of the Solution Nurture platform involved internal storytelling — using education to achieve organizational adoption. Visualizing complex ideas was a key factor here, Craig said.
Craig wrapped up her presentation by encouraging conference attendees with a simple message: “Action begets action.”
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Samsung Galaxy S6 review roundup: Find out what tech critics are saying

We are inching closer to April 10, when Samsung’s Galaxy S6 models will finally hit store shelves.
The new models – Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge - have been built from scratch and look quite promising. While they are yet to enter the Indian market, several tech critics across the world have already got their hands on the dainty devices. Here’s what the tech critics have to say.
Samsung has addressed the major criticism against its flagship lineup, which is its design. The Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge have metal frames and glass bodies both on the front and back. The S6 is 6.8 mm thin and weighs 138g, while the S6 Edge is 7.0mm and weighs 132g. Moreover, the S6 Edge has a great design, which is both refreshing and different.
Looks like, the effort has paid off. “The Galaxy S6 is a stunning device that is as equally pleasing to hold as it is to look at. If you had told me a year ago I would use the word “stunning” to describe a Galaxy phone, I would have called you crazy,” says Joanna Stern of WSJ.
However, she adds in the review that, “There is really no logical reason to buy the Edge. You can tap its side for notifications and other information when the main screen is off, but that wasn’t too helpful. Like with designer sunglasses, you’re mostly paying to look cooler.”
The Samsung Galaxy S6 sports a 5.1 Quad HD Super AMOLOED display with 2560 X 1440 resolution which comes to a very high 577ppi pixel density. The Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge also sports a 5.1 Quad HD Super AMOLED but with dual edge display. Both use Corning Gorilla Glass 4 for protection. As usual, Samsung has nailed it with the display quality. The devices have been lauded for the efficiency of the AMOLED displays, colour accuracy and contrast ratio.
“This is the first time we’ve seen this kind of brightness level on an AMOLED phone, and it really helps boost the clarity of the screen and keeps colours looking punchy when you’re out and about. This will be good news for anyone who travels a lot or primarily uses their phone outside, as it effectively combines the best features of both AMOLED and LCD screen technology, explains Expertreviews.
The devices run the latest Android 5.0 Lollipop and come with a 16MP rear camera along with a 5MP front facing camera. Some of the other features on the camera include Tracking AF, Auto Real-time HDR (Front & Rear), Aperture F1.9, Low Light Video (Front & Rear), High Clear Zoom, IR Detect White Balance, Virtual Shot, Slow Motion, Fast Motion, Pro Mode and Selective Focus.
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More Unbundling Evidence? Google+ Making Photos Available On Google Drive

Company will push Google+ photos to its storage product, but still remains mum about plans for its social network.

Google announced today that it will make photos from Google+ available within users’ Google Drive accounts. It’s a handy new feature for people who use Google+ to store their digital images.
But is it a sign? Well, maybe.
It could be more evidence that Google plans to dismantle Google+ and concentrate more on the sum of its parts, especially the popular photo and Hangouts features. Early this month, Google VP Bradley Horowitz took control of Google+, announcing that he is now in charge of the company’s “Photos and Streams” products. The fact that Horowitz didn’t invoke the Google+ brand in his announcement, coupled with then-fresh remarks by Google SVP Sundar Pichai hinting at a Google+ split prompted a wave of stories in the tech press that Google is planning to pull apart the social network. Some even reported that Google had made the split official.
So far there has been no official word from Google about the issue. However, Google+’s head engineer Yonatan Zunger commented on Google+ that the changes are organizational rather than product changing. “A lot of misunderstanding and speculation. :)” Zunger wrote in early March. “The internal org was renamed ‘Photos and Streams,’ because Sundar likes org names that match what the teams do. And since our org includes Photos, Google+, Blogger, and News, there you have photos, plus several streams of content. No big user-facing changes tied to this at all.”
That singular denial hasn’t stopped the speculation. And Google’s official silence about the social network that it used to regularly tout as a priority is only fueling the fire, making it natural that any new wrinkle inspires fresh reading of the tea leaves.
The Drive update, which is rolling out today on iOS, Android and the web, will create a new photo folder within Drive. New photos will start appearing immediately and the full Google+ library will be available in a few weeks. Users will be able to organize photos within Drive folders, but that organization will not be reflected within Google+.
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Amazon Launches Home Services, Potential Challenger To Yelp, Google & Others

E-commerce giant vets local service providers, lets consumers hire and review them, includes Amazon Happiness Guarantee as part of sale.

Amazon’s always-expanding product lineup now goes beyond products. The e-commerce giant has launched a new section of its website where consumers will be able to hire local service providers, like plumbers, singers and even — as many tech sites have been quick to mention today — a goat grazing service to help clear out unwanted vegetation.
It’s called Amazon Home Services, and it puts Amazon squarely in competition with the likes of Yelp, Angie’s List and general local search/listing providers like Google and Bing. Amazon Home Services is live now in the U.S. — primarily in major metropolitan areas, with further coverage of more rural areas promised in the future.
Amazon says it currently has more than 700 professional verticals listed, with a total of more than two million unique service offers available. Professionals have to be invited to participate, and Amazon says it’s spent 123,000 hours doing background checks on service providers — only three percent of which get accepted.
Consumers can review their service providers, but only after purchasing a service — something that should add credibility when compared to other local service/local search sites where fake reviews are a problem.
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Apple, IBM's New Apps to Help Business Get in Step With Mobile Customers

Nine months after Apple and IBM began working together on building mobile apps for businesses, some of the first fruits are about to appear at UK pharmacy chain Boots, which has begun equipping store employees with iPads to serve shoppers in the aisles.
These customer service apps are part of a bid by Boots to encourage consumers to pre-order cosmetics and toiletries online, similar to calling ahead for medical prescriptions, while turning its 2,500 retail outlets into convenient pick-up points.
"These apps put all of Boots' inventory at (employees') fingertips," said Robin Phillps, who is in charge of digital and e-commerce business at the company, now part of Walgreens Boots Alliance. "This makes it easier for them ... to interact with customers on their own terms."
Companies across dozens of different industries are now eyeing how these mobile business apps from Apple and IBM can hook up front-line staff to back-office systems and make them smarter in face-to-face dealings with customers in the field.
Businesses which first invested heavily in apps for mobile shoppers have just begun to put customer-service employees on an equally mobile footing, Forrester Research said in a report this month on the phenomenon.
With many companies' in-house technical staff struggling to keep pace with the ways their employees use mobile phones, Apple and IBM are part of a growing market for supplying business and government organisations with a new class of apps for employees on the move.
Technology consultants Accenture, Cap Gemini and Deloitte are also top suppliers to this changing way of doing business, along with dozens of other service providers and hundreds of custom designer app firms.
Making staff "smarter"
IBM says it now has more than 200 global companies gearing up to use mobile phone apps through its partnership with Apple. These include U.S. banking group Citi and Banorte of Mexico, Air Canada, and retailers American Eagle Outfitters and Boots UK.
The partnership has announced 14 app templates so far, which IBM then works with clients to customise with specific company data and analytics. Each app lets employees look up customer profiles and answer questions on the go rather than anchoring them to counter terminals as most businesses typically do.
"We are trying to bring that same 'wow' factor, the same changes we have had in our personal lives, to our working lives," said Katharyn White, IBM's global sales and marketing lead for the IBM-Apple partnership.
(Also See:Apps Go Beyond Selfies, With Live TV Broadcasts Starring You)
The goal is to create 100 business apps running on iPhones or iPads by the end of this year, White said. Companies pay a monthly subscription fee per device running the app, plus the costs of the secure iPhones or iPads running the software, as well as for services to hook them up to back-office systems.
For the airline industry, these apps will let flight attendants help passengers rebook flights in mid-air. Financial service apps allow bankers, wealth advisors or insurance agents to make on-the-spot account decisions with clients in the field.
Other Apple-IBM apps give police secure, instant access on iPhones to crime-scene maps, video feeds and suspect profiles.
Besides design expertise for the apps themselves, Apple provides remote technical support for a company's own technology departments managing the apps. And as part of the deal IBM sells iPhones and iPads along with the business apps, a potentially important new revenue stream for Apple as big businesses begin to mobilise more of their workforces.
For IBM, which has software and design teams developing the MobileFirst apps, the apps themselves also take corporate and government customers to a range of IBM services -- technical support, mobile device management, back-office software integration and cloud computing.
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Android fans confess what they envy most about iOS

Android fans are a proud bunch who don’t like admitting things they envy about other platforms, especially those made by (*spit*) Apple. However, open-minded Android and iOS fans alike can see things in other platforms they like and Reddit’s Android community recently had a confessional session in which they admitted what iOS features they’d most like to see Android adopt in the future.
The most popular response had to do with having more granular app permissions on the Google Play store. While Apple lets users grant individual app permissions to apps while rejecting others, app permissions on Google Play are an all-or-nothing proposition where you either grant all permissions or not use the app.
Full device backup is another popular choice for Android users, although one Android fan writes that “Lollipop went a little bit towards fixing this, allowing you to restore the apps you previously had installed,” even though “it still doesn’t restore data, settings, or anything like that.”
Another popular answer — and one that we’ve been harping on for a long time — involves how quickly Android updates get pushed out to devices. Although this would be nice, we’ll never live in a world where an update comes out and every Android user can go get it at once. Android’s business model is based on having multiple OEMs who will want to all install their own apps and customized skins onto their devices. The downside of this is that it takes longer for them to test each new update out and adapt their own software to it.
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Latest Android malware sneakily installs rogue apps, but Play Store users need not worry

Quick heads-up on a vulnerability you might learn about soon. The folks at Palo Alto stumbled across a major security vulnerability within Android that could allow malicious apps to hijack an app install. Before you freak out and hook your phone up to a chemo machine to rid it of any impurities, stop — there’s almost nothing to be worried about here:

• Google has already patched it ahead of this report being released
• The initial bug was reported to Google as early as January 2014. We suspect Google kept it under wraps this long to make sure no-gooders wouldn’t try to target exposed devices
• The vulnerability only affects sideloaded apps or apps downloaded from third-party app stores
• It only affected Android versions prior to 4.4
• For devices not on 4.4 or higher, Palo Alto worked with top manufacturers like Samsung to patch this fix in with their most recent software updates. Amazon also updated their Appstore to patch the vulnerability

So what does it do? According to them, since a side-loaded APK is installed from an unprotected source such as an SD card, an app could hijack the process of installing the app by Android’s package installer. It’d do this by replacing the legit APK with one that would most likely contain some sort of malware and other nasty stuff, and it would all happen without the user even knowing.
The dirty (but full) details can be found in the report published here, but the reality is that most folks with a phone made within the past couple of years are probably safe. Still, if you’re the oddball who still as a Nexus One on Android 2.3 and might be using a third-party app store over Google Play, you’ll be glad you know about it.
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Google Nexus 5 Reportedly Receiving Android 5.1 Lollipop Update

Android 5.1 Lollipop, which has already been rolled out over-the-air (OTA) to the Google Nexus 6 phablet, has reportedly started rolling out over-the-air to Google's 2013 flagship smartphone, the LG-made Nexus 5. The OTA rollout of the update does not come as a surprise, as Google has already provided a Android 5.1 Lollipop factory image for the LG-produced Android stock phone. The firm has also listed a new Android Lollipop image for Nexus 6 on its Google Developers page.
The Android 5.1 Lollipop update with build number LMY47D for the Google Nexus 5 reportedly brings improvement in performance and stability section. However, the detailed changelog is not yet available.
Officially, when introducing the Android 5.1 Lollipop update earlier this month, Google said the new OS version brings support for multiple SIM cards, Device Protection and HD voice on compatible devices. Some of the other features that come as a part of the Android 5.1 Lollipop update for all devices are improved battery life, enhancements in 64-bit ART compiler, and better RAM management. Issues with "Okay Google" have also been fixed. You can also check out a more comprehensive list of changes gleaned from various user reports, here.
According to the Nexus 5 users who got the Android 5.1 Lollipop update (via Phonearena), the update is sized at 220.7MB, so the users might need a Wi-Fi connection for the update. The update will be reaching all Nexus 5 smartphones gradually. However, those who are impatient can install the factory image - refer to our guide on how to download and manually install the Android 5.1 Lollipop factory image.
Notably, soon after announcing the new OS version earlier this month, Google on its AOSP issue tracker page acknowledged a memory leak bug for some users that causes apps to crash and fills up the device's memory. The company said the issue had been fixed internally, but did not provide a timeline for the rollout of the fix for end users. Unfortunately, the memory leak issue has existed for some users since Android 5.0 Lollipop, and Google had back in December announced a fix had been arrived at and had marked it for future release.
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Android 5.1 Lollipop Memory Leak Issue Fixed Internally, Says Google

It seems one of the bugs that plagued Android 5.0 Lollipop is still haunting some users who recently updated to Android 5.1 Lollipop, the first major update to Android Lollipop.
Some users have reported a memory leak issue in the Android 5.1 update that causes apps to crash and even fills device's memory.
The "Memory leak still present on Android 5.1" issue was reported last week on the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) issue tracker by some users.
One of the users wrote on the issue tracker, "I woke up this morning and noticed that Gmail was laggy. I checked the RAM and it reported 800MB used. I cleared all open apps and it still the same. Restart [fixed] it of course. This was the only fix that I was looking forward to in the 5.1 update. So disappointed." The memory leak issue seems to be affecting limited devices such as Google Nexus 5 and Google Nexus 6, as can be seen on the issue tracker.
Google in no time acknowledged the memory leak issue in Android 5.1 Lollipop, and a project member said, "This has been fixed internally. We do not currently have a timeline for public release." We can expect another incremental update to the Android 5.1 (possibly Android 5.1.1) to be released in the coming days or weeks.
The memory leak issue in Android 5.0 Lollipop was first reported back in November last year and a Google project member in December marked the issue for 'Future Release' that seemingly confirmed that the company was unable to roll out a fix for this particular bug even with the Android 5.0.1 Lollipop update. Considering that users who recently updated to Android 5.1 Lollipop are still reporting the issue, it is confirmed that the memory leak issue still occurs.
Google starting last week announced the Android 5.1 Lollipop update that introduced some new features such as support for multiple SIM cards, Device Protection and HD voice on compatible devices with the update.
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Google Mobile-Friendly Algorithm Currently Doesn’t Differentiate Some Desktop Ranking Signals

Having a slow or fast mobile site should not impact your mobile-rankings, assuming your desktop site is fast. Google still uses many desktop signals for mobile ranking, even after April 21st.

Google’s mobile-friendly algorithm is launching soon and we’ve learned that it runs in real-time on a page-by-page basis already. But also coming out of SMX West from Google’s Gary Illyes is that factors like page speed signals for ranking are based on the desktop version, not the mobile version.
We learned this back in November, where Google’s John Mueller said there are still many desktop signals used for mobile ranking, including page speed. But if you think about it, you may have a completely different site for your mobile site and the speed of the mobile site might be 10x faster or slower than the desktop version, so why would Google use the desktop signal for mobile ranking?
While this continues to be true today, Illyes said Google is experimenting with breaking out some of those factors on a mobile versus desktop basis. In some cases, it makes sense, such as with the page speed algorithm, the top heavy algorithm and other algorithms that are based on the construction of the pages themselves. But for algorithms like Penguin or Panda, it makes less sense to break them out on a mobile vs. desktop basis.
Again, Gary from Google said they currently do not break out those signals on a mobile versus desktop basis but they are indeed looking into it and experimenting with it.
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