You probably have a dozen or more Wi-Fi connections saved on your Android phone: your home network, friends’ houses, the workplace, and many more. Most of these require a password, which you probably asked the owner for and then forgot about.
Unfortunately, Android doesn’t let you view the passwords of saved networks, so if you want to share a network with a friend, you have to look up the passkey again. Fortunately, there’s a workaround.
Note: Your device must be rooted to use these applications. These apps are meant to retrieve passkeys for Wi-Fi networks you’ve already connected to. They won’t help you break into new Wi-Fi networks.
There are two apps you can use for this purpose that do essentially the same thing. While Wi-Fi Key Recovery is the tried and true solution, it’s horridly out of date (last updated in 2012). Wi-Fi Passwords is a much more attractive app that’s still being updated, but it doesn’t have as much of a following. Use whichever you prefer.
Install your preferred app, grant it SuperUser permissions, and you’ll be taken to a list of saved Wi-Fi networks. For Wi-Fi Key Recovery, the PSK field is the password. Wi-Fi Passwords will have a network’s password underneath it.
Both apps allow you to search for a network’s SSID (the public name you see when connecting to it).
A screenshot will probably do for sharing a password with a friend, but if you need to export your entire list, you can also utilize each app’s built-in sharing options. Having trouble with your network? We’ve shown how to find and change your Wi-Fi password.
What network passwords did you recover with these apps? Which app do you prefer? Let us know in the comments!
Image Credit: Ditty_about_summer via Shutterstock.com
Visit our Marketing Nerds archive to listen to other Marketing Nerds podcasts!
In this week’s episode of the Marketing Nerds podcast, Executive Editor Kelsey Jones is joined by SEJ Founder Loren Baker and Chief Social Media Strategist Brent Csutoras. They talked about the happenings in 2015 that made a huge impact in the digital marketing world, as well as what marketers should think about in 2016.
Here are a few of transcribed excerpts from their discussion, but make sure to listen to the podcast to hear everything:
Mobilegeddon and its Effect on Paid Search
Even though Google didn’t roll out what was probably expected to be the equivalent of the Florida update for mobile, or a Panda or Penguin for mobile, it did get everyone thinking. Around that same time, we started seeing pretty much across-the-board mobile searching outweighing desktop searches.
It was great timing there. It was also interesting, as around the same time they were doing a big push for Google Now adoption. I think, if anything, it got web masters, SEOs, and marketers together—whether it be in a crisis scenario or not—to put mobile on the forefront. Sometimes you really need that.
It got everyone huddled up and saying, “Hey, let’s put together a plan because Google just slapped us.”
Same thing with Mobilegeddon. It’s like, “Hey, let’s actually talk to the IT team, let’s figure out what our mobile experience is like.” Or, “Hey, who’s used the terrible mobile app we’re sending people to when they try to access this on their smartphone?”
One of the sad things about this particular release was the fact that the only people who would really notice this update are the people who wouldn’t be affected by it; and all the people who were affected by it wouldn’t notice.
It’s all the mom and pop shops, it’s all the little dojos and martial arts schools, the yoga and exercise studios, and all these little shops around town that are already stressing because with “local” you’re already doing stuff based on location. You have stuff where people are on the edge of a zip code and can’t be included in what’s considered six blocks away because they’re in the wrong zip code.
You already have businesses that are challenged because their rankings in local are based on distance first. Now you have an update that potentially keeps them from being included in mobile search at all, and they have no real path to understanding that.
How Ad Blockers can Impact Your Business’ Bottom Line
We’re seeing ad blockers become a much more standardized thing.
It’s definitely picked up a lot and you’ve seen concern, but I don’t think ad blockers are the real cause for the concern. I think that there’s been a drop in value in display ads for a long time and ad blockers are a great excuse for the decrease in demand and the blinders display ads have created in our industry.
It’s a great thing for a fortune company to say, “Well, it’s not that people don’t like display ads, it’s that people are blocking them.” I challenge whether it’s ad blockers or just a changing marketplace for advertising and having to evolve more than anything else.
Last year at SEJ we put forth an initiative to lower our dependency upon banner ads or ads that are served through the exchange.
While it was done to increase revenue rather than to prepare for ad blocker-geddon, as all the ad blocker buzz came out I started to realize, “Hey, we have really lowered our dependency upon banner ads and lower CPMs in exchange-based CPMs.” We were making it harder for people doing problematic advertising to sneak stuff in there.
It’s like ad blockers really woke people up. Once there’s an ability to have an ad blocker on your iPhone by default, it woke people up on two sides. One, it scares publishers to death, especially for the banner advertising. People always tell you to Google-proof your strategy, but you should banner-proof your strategy as well.
Two, around the same time that the ad blockers rolled out, Apple News rolled out Facebook featured articles, or News Now, and then Google App’s project rolled out. The ad blockers are as scary to the delivery devices of this content as it is to the publishers. But at the same time, it opens up a new opportunity.
With Google App, Google can basically work with publishers to bypass the whole on-site browser experience to deliver the content directly to the end-user. One AdSense ad could be worth a lot more than having five or six ads on your site.
From an SEO perspective, it’s going to be tough. Publishers are geared up to do it because they really want to get more reads and they see it as being a real opportunity, but then it’s also an SEO attribution opportunity because people are still going to be finding that content through search.
There are a couple of things that are important to look at with this topic: There’s been a huge increase in vulnerabilities. There’s been a concern from people about ads. There was the whole flash concept of that being vulnerable and so there is the desire from Google’s perspective and Facebook’s perspective to eliminate a lot of these risks.
I think the more we look at this idea that if you control all eyeballs then you control all ad dollars, if you took 60 billion that Google made last year, if you look at the almost $500-billion advertising budget online, Google’s biggest opportunity to increase their revenue is not to increase ads, it’s to take over the entire channel.
Once you’ve digested data where you have made it fast with no distractions and nothing popping up, the competition is not going to be able to keep you in their sight. You’re going to be like, “I don’t want to go through Google Search and find these pages and have them load all slow when I can go to Google’s App program and see everything fast.”
Google, Facebook, and Apple as Publishers
I think what they’re doing is re-structuring with this program that is no longer all-inclusive. It’s not like everybody is in Google App. You have to sign up to be a part of it.
Search engines are one of the last places where your site’s included without a Terms of Service. You’re not signing some Terms of Service to include your site in Google, but when you sign up to Facebook you’re giving away the rights to that. When you sign up to these programs, you give away a lot of your rights to them.
I think you’ll see that all these future programs will have a much easier way to exclude people without having to call it exclusion.
Investigating Other Social Media Platforms and Their Benefits
When Facebook acquired Instagram everyone loved that there was no advertising on Instagram. Now, anyone can buy it anywhere.
There’s Facebook advertising and their partners’ advertising (which is basically device advertising through apps), and now Instagram as well. Facebook is slowly becoming an AdWords where you can contextually advertise on third-party sites, too. What’s next?
The second that Instagram adds the ability to link in the description, SEOs are going to be all over that. What I care the most about is people actually clicking on links because my job as a marketer is to bring targeted traffic back to the website (or back to wherever). I don’t care where it comes from as long it’s highly targeted and people take action on the site. That helps to give you the rankings.
What do Publishers Need to do in 2016?
There is a ton of augmented reality coming. There is Google saying, more than a year ago, that they anticipate in five years you won’t even be on the web.
Desktop search is going down; desktops sales, in general, are going down. You start looking at all of this stuff combined—you talk about the Amazon Echo, you look at this kind of Siri technology, and Cortana— and it starts to get about authority signals on cloud data versus authority on a brand or on a website.
If everything leads us in this direction, what do publishers need to do in 2016 to make sure they’re carrying their authority onto the next platform? I think that’s the big thing people really should be thinking about.
People don’t just digest content in one way, they digest it multiple ways and they share multiple ways.
Podcasting, for example, we’re recording one right now. It’s going to be transcribed, people are going to listen to it in their car, people are going to listen to it in the gym, people will listen to it wherever. Maybe one day there’s going to be some video of this. Can the content that you produce be put into a virtual reality setting? Like, there’s someone sitting there at the table with the three of us having or listening to this discussion.
It’s really just thinking about what you produce being more than what people can solely read, but not forgetting about the basics.
The basics are that Google will still read an article and index it and serve it to 99% of the people out there. But if we know that SEJ is the source of this broadcast and this broadcast is listened to “out there” and there are more people listening and sharing and going to it, and there’s some kind of ownership which links everything back to the source—then that should benefit the brand in the long run.
At the end of the day, how does all the data and discussion and everything that’s being spread out there attributed correctly back to the source? At the end of the day, it’s traffic generation and getting your brand out there in front of the people.
What Marketers Should be Thinking About for 2016
Mobile User Experience
First of all, make sure stuff’s cleaned up. Page feed is getting more and more important, especially in the mobile user experience. If people can’t read your content, Google is not going to serve the content—it’s that simple.
On top of that, really start thinking about what you do from an SEO perspective as being pure digital marketing. I really do believe—and from most of the signals I’ve seen—that when you bring the right people to your site, they’re going to share your content socially. They’re going to get it in front of more people; they’re maybe going to link to it if they use some archaic system like blogging or owning a website; and maybe they’re going to just spend more time on it, whatever it is.
I see all of those signals being much more important going into next year, as a whole, but really make sure that you clean stuff up, too. I could see Google land a smack-down on slow sites, both in mobile and also in desktop, especially as user behavior changes.
Goal-Oriented Social Media Campaigns
From a social side, I think people need to focus more on promoting and campaigning for the right reasons, in the right communities, and with the right messaging.
If you look at any company out there today that does advertisement in a magazine or a commercial, at no point do they decide, in a silo, that they’re just going to create whatever they want—they’re just going to throw the ad in a random five or six magazines; they don’t really care about the demographic; they don’t really care what the messaging is; they’re just going to utilize this magazine as a visibility metric for their advertisement. It just doesn’t work that way.
Repurposing Content
Video will continue to be important, live streaming—like Blab or Periscope or Meercat—will continue to be important.
It comes down to segmenting your data or your content and repurposing it. How can you turn a webinar into a podcast? How could you turn a long-form article into a video tutorial? Things like that.
Making your content stretch further will allow you to write really good content that you can repurpose versus focusing on quantity in just getting stuff out there.
Smart Social and Search Apps
Google is getting smarter and smarter and it’s fascinating to me the stuff it recommends to me.
I’ll research a Christmas present, the next day it will say, “Hey, do you still want to continue researching gym shorts? They’re on sale right now here,” and it just amazes me. That type of predictive search like, “You searched this a few days ago, would you be interested?” I think that that’s going to be part of the apps we use, especially those in social and search.
Artificial Intelligence
AI is huge. Artificial intelligence is improving so ridiculously fast that I think in the next two, three years you’re going to start seeing a huge push of AI coming to a lot of these apps and tools.
To listen to this Marketing Nerds podcast with Loren Baker, Brent Csutoras, and Kelsey Jones:
Download and listen to the full episode at the bottom of this post
Subscribe via iTunes
Sign up on IFTTT to receive an email whenever the Marketing Nerds podcast RSS feed has a new episode
Listen on Stitcher
Think you have what it takes to be a Marketing Nerd? If so, message Kelsey Jones on Twitter, or email her at kelsey [at] searchenginejournal.com.
Visit our Marketing Nerds archive to listen to other Marketing Nerds podcasts!
Image Credits
Featured Image: Image by Paulo Bobita In-post Photo #1: Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock.com
Android developers launch so many games every year that it’s difficult to keep a track of everything. Did you miss out on a game that you should be playing? Our end-of-year roundup is a handy checklist to know what your thumbs should be tapping on.
Unlike our previous annual roundups, we’re getting rid of paid games this time. This year had enough fantastic free titles that you don’t necessarily need to spend a dime to enjoy quality gaming on your phone or tablet. And if you have a Chromecast 2, then you can play on your big screen too!
WWE Immortals
Genre: Action
NetherRealm Studios, the makers of Mortal Kombat, took the world of WWE sports entertainment and supercharged the “entertainment”. Popular wrestlers like The Rock, John Cena and The Undertaker are turned into overblown mythical characters, while keeping their on-screen personas and signature moves intact. The art and graphics are fantastic and you won’t get enough of it.Of course, what matters is the actual gameplay, which ticks all the right boxes: it’s simple, fun, intuitive, and makes you want to keep playing more. Throw in elements like multiplayer matches and tournaments, and it’s surprising that this game is free. Read our full review for more, or just download the game and start playing.
Download: WWE Immortals for Android (Free)
Stick Cricket 2
Genre: Sports
The original Stick Cricket is one of the best sports games for Android. The sequel builds on a successful formula. The game is all about choosing which side of the bat you want to hit, and tapping at the right moment to hit the ball as hard as you can. Get as many runs as you can to get through challenges, which earn you skill points to upgrade your gear. With a better bat, gloves, or shoes, you’ll be able to score more runs. Those challenges aside, you can enter tournaments to beat the world’s best teams. Much like Baseball Hero doesn’t require you to be a baseball fan, Stick Cricket 2 doesn’t need you to like cricket. It’s just a fantastic casual game, which can be played both one-handed and two-handed!
Download: Stick Cricket 2 for Android (Free)
Brickies
Genre: Skill
People, have you played Brickies? What do you mean you haven’t played Brickies! You really should play Brickies, you know. Oh yeah, I should tell you what it’s about. Brickies isn’t the first reinterpretation of the classic brick breaker game, but it’s the best yet. The big difference is that if you miss the ball, it’s not game over. Instead, the ball is deactivated from being a breaker and just keeps bouncing around. Hit it with your paddle again to activate it, so that it can break those bricks! And man, those levels are devious, going from circular formations of multi-layered bricks to giant bricks which need to be broken up into smaller bricks. As far as casual games go, Brickies is as good as they come.
Download: Brickies for Android (Free)
ZigZag
Genre: Skill
Sometimes, the simplest games are the most addictive. The only thing you have to do in ZigZag is tap the screen. Each tap changes the direction your ball travels in. Tap once and it’ll go right; tap a second time to go left; tap again to go right again; and so on. All you have to do is stay on the platform and not fall off, collecting as many diamonds as you can. How hard can it be, right? Yeah, I thought so too. Was I in for a surprise. Not since Flappy Bird has a game been so simple, so addictive, and so infuriating all at once. The ads can be a bit annoying, but the game is totally worth it. Can you beat my high score of 936?
Download: ZigZag for Android (Free)
Hearthstone Heroes of Warcraft
Genre: Cards
Hearthstone has been on tablets for some time now, but this year it finally came to Android phones. It’s a turn-by-turn card game that’s flat-out geeky fun. Each card has magical powers, and you have to “attack” your opponent’s cards, and later his hero, to win the game. Earn points, upgrade or buy more cards, take on bigger villains—you know the drill. If you’re new to the world of Hearthstone, you’d be wise to know a few tricks to earn gold cards and dust. If you’ve already played Hearthstone, then this is just letting you in on the action wherever you are.
Download: Hearthstone Heroes of Warcraft for Android (Free)
Angry Birds 2
Genre: Puzzle
The original Angry Birds put mobile gaming on the map. After several years, developer Rovio launched a sequel and boy, it lived up to expectations. Angry Birds 2 hits all the right notes for any fan of the series, for anyone who likes puzzle games, or for anyone who likes casual gaming in general. A new destructo-meter, spell cards, and multi-segment levels add to the fun. But the coolest part is how challenging Angry Birds 2 is. If you lose in a level and restart it, the puzzle is rearranged so you can’t just tweak your strategy; you’ll have to solve a new puzzle each time. And like always, Rovio keeps the difficulty right: it’s frustrating, but never so frustrating that you’ll give up.
Download: Angry Birds 2 for Android (Free)
Pac-Man 256
Genre: Puzzle
I was torn between recommending Crossy Road or Pac-Man 256. They’re both great games made by the same developer, and based on similar gameplay. But Pac-Man 256 offers just a little more, not the least in terms of taking forward a video game classic. Pac-Man 256 has you playing as the little yellow creature, trying to gobble up dots and cherries while outrunning the ghosts. But there’s something new now. No more “levels”, it’s an endless maze and you have to try and outrun “the glitch”, which is eating up the maze. It’s a nostalgic joyride. And yeah, try and get the special 256 combo for a… let’s say, pleasant surprise.
Download: Pac-Man 256 for Android (Free)
Asphalt Nitro
Genre: Racing
Need for Speed: No Limits is probably the most kickass racing game of the year, but I’m going to pick Asphalt Nitro for this list. Why? Racing games for Android usually go into multiple gigabytes, both in download and the amount of space they take. Asphalt 8: Airborne is a great racing game, but it requires good hardware! They also don’t run smoothly on older phones. Asphalt Nitro bucks the trend. Yes, the graphics aren’t as polished as what you’ll find in the latest NFS, but it’s not bad to look at. More importantly, the gameplay is just as great as ever, bringing you the best of arcade racing to your handheld device. From full-speed races to driving as a cop to catch the bad guys, you’ll get your share of diverse, engrossing gameplay. And while there are in-app purchases, you can safely turn them off and play the game without them.
Download: Asphalt Nitro for Android (Free)
Unkilled
Genre: First Person Shooter
If you loved Dead Trigger 2 as much as I did, or generally find it cathartic to shoot zombies and blow them up, you can’t go wrong with Unkilled. Made by Madfinger Games (the Dead Trigger developers), it’s a visually stunning game with some of the creepiest zombies and detailed environments you’ll see on a mobile device. There’s also something new: You never squeeze a trigger. Instead, when you point your crosshair at any zombie, your gun starts auto-shooting. It feels weird initially, but once you get used to it, it makes so much sense that I wish all casual first-person shooter mobile games adopted this mechanism. Again, the prompts for in-app purchases can be a little annoying, but it’s a fine game as long as you ignore those.
Download: Unkilled for Android (Free)
HoPiKo
Genre: Platform
The fate of the gaming world lies in your hand, player one. It’s time to jump, jump, jump! Yeah, that old-school arcade music is really cool, right? No time for that now, jump. Go from one platform to another at breakneck speed. Never stop. Tap to jump. Keep jumping. Look out, there’s a laser! Don’t tap here, you won’t make it; swipe in some direction to jump there. There you go. This pixel art style is lovely to look at, and the solid colors really add a lot of depth. Why did you stop jumping, you fool? Argh, okay, let’s start again. Remember, five clean runs gets you one level, and you have to keep going. Don’t stop. Every gamer out there is depending on you. Jump to it!
Download: HoPiKo for Android (Free)
BONUS: Lara Croft GO ($4.99)
Genre: Puzzle
I know, I know. I said this would be only free games. But let’s make an exception here, all right? Lara Croft GO is the game of the year, and I’ll fight anyone who wants to disagree. Everything about this game is perfect, from the gorgeous graphics to the challenging puzzles. It often tips its hat to the original Tomb Raider series, but Lara Croft GO is its own game with its own style. Each level has a set of mini-puzzles and different elements or enemies, from moving platforms to vicious snakes who follow you around. One step at a time, we’ll get through this together. Spend the five bucks, it’s the best money you’ll spend on a mobile game this year. Heck, the developers even added a whole bunch of new levels since our original review, without charging anyone a dime. Hopefully we’ll see more of that in the future too.
Download: Lara Croft GO for Android ($4.99)
What’s Your Android Game of the Year?
Lara Croft GO is the obvious winner for me this year, but Brickies actually came pretty close just for how well it reinvented a classic and kept me coming back for more. Is your favorite game of this year on this list? Let us know in the comments below!
Google announced a change to Search Console today that will be of particular interest to webmasters with Android apps.
A new filter has been added to the Search Analytics report in Google Search Console, called Search Appearance. Within this view you can see which search queries caused Google to display the “install app” button for your website’s native app.
In addition, you can filter this information by country to see in what parts of the world your app is getting seen most in Google search.
It’s important to note that this filter is not capable of recording how many searchers actually went ahead and installed the app, it can only record how many times the “install app” button was seen.
According to Zineb Ait Bahajji on Twitter, this change will be rolled out worldwide to anyone using Search Console who also has a verified android app:
@jaaved Yes, it is rolled out globally, for all search console users who have an android app verified.
— Zineb Ait (@Missiz_Z) December 21, 2015
The information gained from this new filter can help web asters market their app more strategically based on how people are finding it in search.
Nexus phones have always been a popular choice among Android enthusiasts for the ease with which they can be rooted and modded.
This is still true of the Nexus 6P and Nexus 5X, especially thanks to a new systemless root process from renowned developer Chainfire. Systemless root is cleaner and less invasive, makes unrooting or installing OS updates easier, and is even reported to not break security-reliant services like Android Pay.
It’s a relatively straightforward process and works on Windows, Mac and Linux. But, as always, you should back up everything before you begin, just in case.
Let’s get started.
What You Need to Know Before You Start
When Android 6.0 Marshmallow was first launched, it was a little more difficult to root than previous versions and required you to flash a modified boot image to your phone. This is no longer the case, and rooting has now been streamlined into a two-step process.
Ironically, it does mean that the preliminary steps before you root are now the most complicated parts. These steps are:
Download and setup Fastboot
Install Windows drivers
Unlock your phone’s bootloader
If you have rooted an Android phone before — a Nexus phone in particular — then you might be able to skip these steps. You might already have Fastboot on your PC and be familiar with how it works.
And you might have pre-emptively unlocked your phone’s bootloader. You will have saved yourself a lot of hassle if you have, as unlocking the bootloader wipes your phone, including the internal storage.
But assuming you’ve done neither of these, here’s what you need to know.
Step 1: Download Fastboot
Fastboot is a small utility that enables your PC to communicate with your phone over USB when the phone isn’t booted into Android. It is a part of the Android SDK.
Go to the Android developer website and download SDK Tools for Windows (choose the zip version), Mac, or Linux.
On Windows, unpack the zip file and launch SDK Manager.exe. When the Android SDK Manager opens, select the Android SDK Platform-tools option and click Install
On Mac and Linux, unpack the download and navigate to the tools folder within it. Double click the android file to launch the Android SDK Manager. Now select the Android SDK Platform-tools option and click Install
Once the download has finished, you’ll find a new platform-tools folder has appeared within your downloaded SDK folder. This contains Fastboot.
Fastboot is a command line tool, which means it is controlled via the command line on Windows, or the Terminal app on Mac and Linux.
This can be intimidating if you haven’t used it before, but really, you just need to check for typos when copying the commands from this guide. Also, note that Mac and Linux commands are preceded by ./ (dot slash), and that this isn’t used on Windows.
Step 2: Get the Windows Drivers
There’s an extra step you need to perform if you’re using Windows, which is to install the drivers for your phone. You can download and install this from the Android developer website.
Step 3: Unlock the Bootloader
To make any changes to your phone’s system, it needs to have an unlocked bootloader.
To unlock the bootloader on your Nexus, you first need to enable it in the Developer options in Android. These are hidden by default. To make them appear go to Settings > About phone and scroll to the bottom of the screen. Now tap Build number seven times.
Hit the back button and you’ll see that the Developer options have now appeared. Tap on this and enable the options labelled OEM unlocking and USB debugging.
Now’s the time to check that you have backed up all of your data. And make sure you store your backups on your PC or in the cloud, not on the device. Completing the rest of this step will wipe your phone, including the internal storage.
You can now power down your phone.
Next, connect it to your PC with a USB cable, then boot into the bootloader (also referred to as Fastboot mode) by holding down the power and volume down keys at the same time.
First, we need to check that the phone and PC are communicating with each other.
On your computer, open the command line or terminal and type cd[space] then drag the platform-tools folder onto the command prompt. Hit Enter.
(This changes the directory the command line is looking at to the one where Fastboot is stored. Without this step, you’d need to type the full path to the Fastboot app every time.)
On Windows, type fastboot devices and hit Enter
On Mac or Linux, type ./fastboot devices and hit Enter
You should see a list of the devices connected to your PC. There’ll only be one, and it will be indicated by a serial number. This means all is good.
To unlock the bootloader, go to the command line or terminal.
On Windows, type fastboot oem unlock and hit Enter
On Mac or Linux, type ./fastboot oem unlock and hit Enter
It only takes a second to complete. When you boot your phone now, you’ll see a brief warning about the phone being unable to check for corruption, which you can ignore. When the Google logo appears on screen, there will be an unlocked padlock icon beneath it.
You’re now ready to root your Nexus.
Root Your Nexus
Now that you’ve got everything else set up, rooting your Nexus 5X or Nexus 6P is a simple process. It involves downloading and flashing two files.
Step 4: Download the Files
The files you need are TWRP (a custom recovery) and SuperSU (the app that roots the phone). You need to download the correct version for your phone.
For the Nexus 6P:
download the latest version of SuperSU (the one we used is 2.61)
download TWRP for the 6P. Pick the latest version
For the Nexus 5X:
download the latest version of SuperSU (the one we used is 2.62)
download TWRP for the 5X . Pick the latest version
The version numbers will change in the future as the apps are updated. It’s a good idea to use the latest version available, and SuperSU versions prior to 2.60 won’t work with the instructions below. We’ve tested this rooting process with Android 6.0 and 6.0.1.
Step 5: Move the Files to the Right Location
Copy the TWRP image file into the platform-tools folder on your computer where the Fastboot app is also stored.
Copy the SuperSU zip file into the internal storage of your Android phone.
Step 6: Flash TWRP
The first step in rooting is to flash a custom recovery. This is the TWRP file that you downloaded.
A custom recovery is a small piece of software that enables you to carry out diagnostic and maintenance tasks on your phone without booting into Android. It’s essential for all Android hacks, including rooting, and flashing custom ROMs.
Boot your phone into Fastboot mode by holding down the power and volume down keys together. Connect your phone to your PC with a USB cable.
Go to the command line or terminal on your PC and use the cd command to change the directory to point to the platform-tools folder, as we did when unlocking the bootloader.
On Windows, type fastboot flash recovery [twrp-filename].img and hit Enter
On Mac or Linux, type ./fastboot flash recovery [twrp-filename]twrp.img and hit Enter
Wait a couple of seconds for the job to finish. You’ll now be able to boot into TWRP.
Step 7: Flash SuperSU
The next step is to flash the SuperSU zip file, which should be stored on your phone. This patches the boot image, roots the phone, and installs the SuperSU app that you can use to manage root access within Android.
To boot into TWRP from Fastboot mode, press the volume down button twice so that Recovery Mode appears on screen. Then tap the power button.
TWRP will now load. Tap Install, and locate the SuperSU zip file you copied to your phone’s storage. Tap the file to select it.
To root your phone, swipe your finger along the slider labelled Swipe to confirm Flash.
Keep an eye on the screen for any additional instructions, although there shouldn’t be any. Wait until the process is fully completed, then you can reboot your phone.
Your Nexus is now rooted.
And You’re Done!
Once you reboot your phone, you should see that the SuperSU app has been installed. If you want to check that rooting worked, you can download an app like Root Check from the Play Store.
Alternatively, just dive straight in with some of the best root apps, like Greenify for longer battery life, or Xposed for a huge range of tweaks and mods.
Have you rooted your Nexus? What are your favorite root apps? Did you have any problems? Let us know in the comments below.
Visit our Marketing Nerds archive to listen to other Marketing Nerds podcasts!
In this week’s episode of the Marketing Nerds podcast, we are joined by Robert ‘RSnake’ Hansen, who is VP of WhiteHat Security Labs, well-respected DefCon speaker, world renown hacker, writer of Slowloris, and creator of Ha.ckers.org.
In our discussion, we talk about a number of really important topics, such as what webmasters need to focus on when it comes to website security, hiring a forensic team to evaluate your site, HTTPs and whether it helps, whether WordPress is a secure platform, should we really be worried about NSA, Facebook, and other companies tracking our data, finding Hillary Clinton’s email servers, and China’s new social engineer hack that is pretty damn scary.
This is definitely a Marketing Nerds Podcast you don’t want to miss.
Here are a few of transcribed excerpts from our discussion, but make sure to listen to the Podcast to hear everything:
What Companies Should be Considering to Stay Secure Online Today
Let’s take a retailer as an example as opposed to a bank or something. I think retailers have an interesting problem because they generally like to have user-generated content on their site. Things like feedback, or somebody asking questions, or send a friend functionality, or shopping lists, or whatever, all that stuff is user-generated content. Maybe not in a way most people think of it, but it doesn’t matter. If I’m storing something in a database that’s being reflected back at some point, that is definitely user-generated content.
I think if you’re going to say there’s one massive problem, it’s people just generally don’t do good sanitation of inputs and they don’t do good sanitation of output. The problem with that is they intermingle it with things that are actually sensitive. It’s not particularly sensitive what my shopping list or my wedding list, that kind of stuff. That’s not particularly interesting.
What is interesting is if I somehow find a way to escape out of a query and make a call to your database and pull out your user name and password, that, on the other hand, is very interesting.
Because all this stuff is intermingled and it’s all in one big database, different table but one big database, and using one database user with all the same permissions as if it was an admin, that simple design choice makes it incredibly easy to attack.
Similarly, if I’m allowed to write content and it gets saved to the actual HMTL of a page or gets reflected out as HTML, or as an admin, if from the internet I can log into my site and physically change the layout of the page or whatever, which is a common feature in content management systems, that is a pretty dangerous design choice because if there’s ever any vulnerability in the CMS, or if there’s ever any vulnerability in the user of the CMS, suddenly the attacker can modify the entire source of the website. That leads to malware, stolen usernames and passwords, and whatever.
You have to decide how bad is it if something bad happens. If this happens on some brochure where there’s nothing there, it doesn’t matter. If it happens on your main corporate website where people actually do purchase things, on the other hand, that might be the end of your company. It just depends on what we’re talking about.
Once you’ve decided that it’s something you actually want to deal with and it’s a vulnerability that’s real or whatever, generally speaking, if you know the vulnerability is there it’s very easy to fix. Super easy. There are only a couple of vulnerability classes out there that actually are tricky to solve. For the most part, it’s usually one or two lines in your code and you’re done.
If you don’t know that it’s there, there are several things you can do. One is you can hire a penetration testing firm, a company like ours that does manage security testing. Two, you can hire a bug bounty team. You basically say, “Any takers, anybody who wants to break into us we’ll pay you if you find a vulnerability.”
There are some issues with that. You have to be fairly mature to even go down that model, but the nice part is you get a robust group of random people who are all trying to hack you all at once. The third way, even if both of those fails, what you can do is you can get cyber insurance. Cyber insurance is wonderful, assuming that you’re covered, which means usually they ask you some questions like, “Do you do security auditing?” So you must have one of the first two things nailed down before you can go down that path.
I think one of the scarier things I’m seeing right now is a move to rapid redeployment where you have a website that they think it’s compromised, you just immediately replace all the code back to its known good state. It doesn’t matter that much if you get compromised then. As long as you have pretty good monitoring, you can quickly get the site back up and running.
That stops infections from taking hold in some cases where they’re not cloaking it, as a good black hat SEO would know. What it doesn’t solve is the data theft part. If you’re dealing with digital goods where it doesn’t really matter if they steal the digital good and you don’t really have any valuable information in their database, that rapid redeployment model works really well.
Does HTTPS really secure your website or just an SEO thing?
It is both. I think before you make a decision, one way or another, you should understand what the economics of it are and also understand that Google is doing this, in my opinion, primarily to prevent ad injection companies, ISPs or whatever, from injecting their own adds. Looking at the economics of it, I know that’s horrible but I’m a cynical bastard.
There is a security benefit to using it, not a huge one, but I would say the less active adversary who’s just passively listening on the wire, who happens to be a man on the middle, like at a coffee shop or something, is not going to be able to drive a whole lot of data out of a stream that uses HTTPS. They’ll be able to drive a few things, maybe they can figure out what pages you’re hitting, but they’re not really going to be able to see the content itself in most cases. That’s not the truth of all cases, but most cases.
The lazy adversary will have no idea what they’re doing. Once you get to the much more sophisticated adversaries like if, unfortunately, I were the man on the middle, I’d probably be able to see everything you’re doing, and that’s because of side channel attacks and various problems in the browser and so on. It’s not like it’s hopeless and it’s not terrible, but it’s definitely not a great security. Let’s put it that way.
The real reason that I think to do it is not just the immediate ranking boost, which I think it’s probably more like if you have a competitor who’s exactly the same rank as you, it’ll put you above them. It’s not much of a ranking factor beyond that. I think the actual value is any links you get between now and the point at which you switch over to HTTPS will have a 15% link penalty, approximately, until you get to change their link over to HTTPS because of the 301 redirect from the HTTP to the HTTPS.
Let’s say you have 200 links and 50% of them you can get them to change over to HTTPS, the other 100 you can’t, you’d have a 15% penalty. It’s like showing up to work and missing 7 and a half percent of your work week or whatever.
In my opinion, it is worth doing sooner than later for that reason alone. You don’t want to have to sacrifice any links unnecessarily.
How secure is WordPress overall?
I found a lot of vulnerabilities in WordPress over the years. I’ve also used WordPress as a core platform for a bunch of my websites and I would say gradually they’ve gotten quite a bit better. I really like the fact that they are doing more automated updates. I think that’s very clever. I think with something as simple as that plus WordFence and you’ve got a pretty decent defense, I will not go on a limb and say that the plug-ins are very good, though. The plug-ins, in general, are a gigantic crap shoot and tend to be full of vulnerabilities.
I’ve never liked the fact that their admin page is accessible in a known location. That’s just a big problem point. I don’t like how trackbacks work. I think those are very dangerous. I don’t like how the web user owns all the files. That’s very dangerous.
I don’t like how their database is set up, especially everything having the same level of access, usernames and passwords combined with text, all that stuff. There are some very strange design decisions that came from antiquity, back when WordPress was tiny that I think we’re stuck with, which modern-day, I would say, don’t do it that way. Don’t have your usernames and passwords in a PHP file and the root directory. Little things like that.
Should people turn off Trackbacks in WordPress?
Absolutely. Immediately, as a matter of fact.
Should we be wary about things like NSA spying on us or the rights we give to Facebook in their app?
I think people are right in being concerned in so much that the architecture itself allows for it. Let me give you an example. Right now, even without all of those crazy permissions, if I sent you an account, or a little light app, or something, there’s a million of those on the Android platform, I don’t actually need all those permissions to snoop on you.
I’d say for instance, the accelerometer in the phone is so sensitive that it can actually pick up voices without access to the microphone. If I wanted to, as an adversary, I could probably build a very tiny app that was able to discern most voices in the room, not as sensitive, not as well as your microphone, the microphone is designed for that purpose, but well enough that it would get me what I want.
I think it’s important for people to be aware that this is possible more than it’s necessarily being worried about the implications of any existing app or whatever in so much that if I download a bunch of apps and I have 50 on my phone, I should assume that at least one of them either has a vulnerability or is maliciously developed to do something bad to me.
That way, having that mindset just means maybe I shouldn’t bring that phone into the meeting, or maybe I should pull out the battery if my phone is capable of that, or maybe I shouldn’t have this conversation. You know what I mean?
Your Adversaries are Much More Capable Than They Used to be
Once upon a time if I wanted to find an exploit, every single web server, let’s say, that was vulnerable to some exploit, it would take me effectively the end of my life to scan the entire internet because by the time I finished scanning the internet, it would have changed so much because it took so long that I’d have to start the scan all over again. We’re talking, in some cases, months to scan even a very small chunk of the internet.
Nowadays there’s a change at Linux kernel that happened a couple of years back that makes it so I can scan much, much, much, much faster than I used to be able to. I’m no longer bound by a number of sockets that a computer can open and now I’m bound by bandwidth. Bandwidth is cheap. It’s easy to get a lot of bandwidth. Now I could scan, let’s say, the entire internet on a single port in a few minutes, handful of minutes.
What that really means is I know that sounds bad, I can basically find every vulnerable machine in a few minutes, but it’s actually worse than that because what I can do is take that data and shove it in your database, and the internet doesn’t change that much that rapidly. I can run that scan, let’s say, once a day, or once a week, or whatever.
Then let’s say a new vulnerability comes out for WordPress or whatever. I can go to my database, look for all the vulnerable things that are in that database, and then start attacking them.
I can literally compromise every single machine that’s vulnerable on the entire internet in a few minutes. Long are the days of patch managements in terms of effectiveness once that really become weaponized. We won’t have the opportunity to get in front of it. You won’t even have the time to download the patch and start installing it by the time you will be compromised.
What that really means is you need to look for other things. I think DevOps is a really interesting movement in our industry towards rapid patch management, rapid fixing, detection. There are some interesting tricks out there for doing detection of somebody who’s compromising you, that kind of thing.
Basically, the point of the presentation is that whole method of keeping something in separate directory no one will ever find me, or trying to protect myself by removing the word PHP out of my Apache HTTP response or whatever. That just doesn’t work anymore, or, at least, it doesn’t work well enough to stop an adversary like what I’m talking about.
China’s New Social Engineering Hack: The Human Credit Score
China has a new credit score the country is considering, I think it actually originated from Alibaba or something so it’s not a guarantee that this will happen. Effectively, if you and I are friends, and I’m a political dissident and China knows about that, you and your credit score would get dinged because you and I are friends on some social network. If you buy things like dishwashers and baby food, your credit score would go up. If you buy video games, your credit score would go down.
Anything that the states want you to do, you’d get a higher credit score, and that credit score actually means something. It helps you get a better passport, they actually give you money, you get better jobs. If you get a lower credit score you get ostracized by your friends, you cannot have certain types of jobs, again, you can’t travel internationally, and so on.
I think that is one of the most interesting hacks I’ve ever heard of because it’s very similar the way the Stasi used to work. You never know who’s part of the Stasi, your best friend could be, so you never really want to say anything negative because you can always be ostracized or outed by the very person who you have dinner with. This is at a mass scale and it basically shows how incredibly dangerous social networking is because now they really do have a very powerful platform for identifying this.
It would be a public score that anyone can check on anyone else’s score, which is interesting. The government hasn’t come out and said they were definitely doing this, but the idea is on the next couple of years. It’s already there, it already exists, but in the next couple of years the theory is this might become law, in which case you better start working on your credit score right now because down the road it will impact your ability to get loans, have friends, and all kinds of stuff.
To listen to this Marketing Nerds podcast with Robert ‘RSnake’ Hansen and Brent Csutoras:
Download and listen to the full episode at the bottom of this post
Subscribe via iTunes
Sign up on IFTTT to receive an email whenever the Marketing Nerds podcast RSS feed has a new episode
Listen on Stitcher
Think you have what it takes to be a Marketing Nerd? If so, message Kelsey Jones on Twitter, or email her at kelsey [at] searchenginejournal.com.
Visit our Marketing Nerds archive to listen to other Marketing Nerds podcasts!
Image Credits
Featured Image: Image by Paulo Bobita In-post Photo #1: Image by Aki Libo-on In-post Photo #2: Image by Robert Hansen. Used with permission.
When you want to buy a new Android phone, you’ll see a lot of options on Amazon and other retailers from companies you haven’t heard of before. Till a few years back, we would have told you to avoid these cheap Chinese imports. But you’d be a fool to blindly ignore them now.
Why should you buy a Chinese phone? These handsets are usually packed with specifications that make them seem cheap and like a great deal compared to bigger companies. The same hardware will cost a lot more on a phone made by Samsung or HTC, for instance. The Wall Street Journal went ga-ga over a Chinese phone and lamented its unavailability in the US. Suffice to say, cheap Android devices beat flagships for several reasons.
Chinese handsets have a hangover effect. Till a couple of years ago, cheaper Androids meant poor quality. But because of Moore’s Law and changing economics, the cheap handsets you get now are actually pretty good. I’ve personally used several of them, and I can no longer justify spending more money on a Samsung, LG, or equivalent big company when I can get a Lenovo, Xiaomi, or Oppo instead.
Don’t Trust “Made in China”? Think Again
The “Made in China” tag ends up being a deterrent for lots of people. Newsflash: Every smartphone you buy is almost certainly made in China. From Apple’s iPhone to the low-cost Moto E, every handset is manufactured there.
But not everyone’s problem is with the actual manufacturing itself. “Chinese electronics” have suffered from the perception of low-quality, cheap products. And while that perception is slowly changing, reality has outpaced opinion. There are plenty of great quality electronics that originate in China, and you’re only missing out if you don’t take them seriously.
For just one example, take a look at OnePlus. The OnePlus One, OnePlus Two, and the OnePlus X got good reviews from everyone. It’s a phone that several tech enthusiasts, influencers, and reviewers recommend wholeheartedly. But it is entirely a Chinese company. You’d be crazy to ignore the OnePlus just because it’s Chinese.
So really, get over the “Made in China” bias. It’s not doing you any favors.
Chinese Phones Aren’t Cheap Knockoffs
The other big point raised against Chinese phones is that they’re cheap knockoffs. A large part of this is because of the Apple vs. Samsung battle, but again, some of it is historical. Initially in the Android race, Chinese smartphone makers did shamelessly copy and lift popular designs. Even today, several parties are guilty of that. But to write off all Chinese phone makers because of that is completely unfair.
For example, the Oppo N1, launched in 2013, featured the world’s first rotating camera on a smartphone. It was an engineering feat, designed for those who love to take selfies. The new Gionee Marathon M5 packs two batteries into a single phone without making it too bulky for incredible battery life. Chinese phone makers are constantly innovating now, even though Xiaomi’s CEO says “wow” moments won’t happen for five years.
More importantly, as a consumer, it doesn’t matter who invented things. Heck, Apple didn’t invent as much as you think it did. Stop worrying about who first developed something and focus on the best product right now.
Privacy and Security? It’s No Worse
For the longest time, Chinese phones from Huawei, Xiaomi and others were suspected to be secretly transmitting user data to servers in China. The companies have repeatedly denied this, and the NSA has been accused of counter-spying too. In turn, China is imposing security demands on US companies.
The sad part is that it’s almost impossible to be 100% sure that the companies aren’t spying on you, or whether you are any safer by using a non-Chinese phone. After all, we already know that even interest in privacy puts you on the NSA’s watchlist.
Look, when it comes to avoiding Internet surveillance on your phones, security experts keep contradicting each other every few months. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t be alert, but that using a Chinese phone doesn’t seem to be any more dangerous than using a phone from any other country.
What to Look For in a Chinese Phone
If you’re ready to take the plunge and buy a Chinese phone, it’s not as simple as just logging on to Amazon and picking up the first one you see. There are still a few things you should consider so that you get a great phone.
Be brand conscious: Every Chinese phone isn’t the same. Much like a Samsung is different from an LG, a Meizu is different from a ZTE. You need to pay attention to the brands. Some of the more well-known brands are Huawei, Lenovo, Xiaomi, Oppo, Gionee, Meizu, LeTV, and OnePlus.
Research, research, research: I can’t say this strongly enough. Buying a Chinese phone isn’t as simple as walking into a Best Buy and picking up a Moto X. Read whatever reviews you can about a phone, preferably from reviewers who live in the same country as you.
Check if it supports your country: This is the most important part of buying Chinese phones. If you’re in the US, AndroidPit’s roundup or PhoneArena’s list of Chinese phones is a good place to start. But no matter what, I’d recommend checking out Will My Phone Work (pictured above) to be doubly sure about the Chinese phone working on your local carrier.
Buy and pay from reliable ecommerce: Don’t just go to some random website and buy your phone. Much like you would stick to Amazon over a smaller, unknown e-retailer in the US, you need to adopt the same practices while shopping from China. Ideally, buy from the company itself, like Mi.com for Xiaomi phones. You can also try AliExpress.com, which is similar to eBay. But similarly, adopt the best practices to avoid eBay scams and always use PayPal for transactions.
Global warranty: Make sure you check the fine print about the warranty on your phone! If you’re unsure about warranty, I’d recommend checking out US-based companies that rebrand and repackage Chinese phones. Blu is a great example of this, with phones like the Blu Studio Energy and its mammoth battery being a steal for $150.
Have You Bought a Chinese Phone?
Have you bought an Android phone in the past year from one of the well-known Chinese manufacturers like Lenovo, Huawei, Xiaomi, Meizu, or OnePlus? What has your experience been like? Would you recommend Chinese phones to others? Let us know in the comments!
Google is finally bringing some useful features from its Android app to iOS users. Among these new features are offline navigation, local gas price information, store busy times, and more.
While the addition of each of these features is noteworthy, the most significant of these updates is offline navigation. Now you can grab any section of a Google map and save it to your phone to access again whenever you’d like.
Download Maps for Offline Use
Saving a section of a map to your iOS device gives you all the functionality you’d expect from accessing Maps with an Internet connection. This includes the ability to search for locations within the area – from there you can get turn by turn directions to the location, retrieve store hour information, and everything else possible with a connection. Well, almost everything.
Omitted from downloaded maps is anything not related to traveling with your own vehicles. That means transit information, as well as walking and biking directions, are not available in offline maps
There’s no word on if those features will be available at some point, but as it stands offline maps take up a considerable amount of storage space, upwards of 100 MB per map. In an effort to preserve storage space on your device, downloaded maps will expire automatically after one month.
Downloading maps is easy. Here’s how to do it:
Search for the map location you want to download
Tap “Download” on the place sheet
Alternatively, go to to “Offline Areas” in the main menu and tapping the “+” button.
If you have downloaded maps on your device, Google will revert to the saved versions automatically when it detects you’re on a sub-par connection.
Store Busy Times
In addition to offline maps, Google Maps for iOS now has a feature you’re likely familiar with from searching with from searching on Safari or Chrome – store busy times. Find out when stores are at their busiest so you can decide when is the most ideal time for you to go.
This information renders in the form of a bar graph, as shown below:
This information is automatically populated based on actual day-to-day foot traffic to the location.
Compare Gas Prices
Another new feature added to Google Maps is the ability to compare local gas prices simply by typing into the search bar: “gas prices in [your city]”.
A list of gas prices and locations will then be shown:
When it comes to comparing both the iOS and Android versions of Google Maps both are basically now on par, with each app including and omitting the same sets of features. All of these new features are available today by updating Google Maps from the App Store.
Screenshots taken on 14/12/2015 by author. Featured Image Credit: Tsyhun / Shutterstock.com
Back in November, the Chrome apps for Android and iOS received a big update — and a new feature — that will surely bring joy to those who have trouble staying within data limits due to their Web browsing habit.
The new feature is called Data Saver Mode and Google claims that it can reduce data usage by to 70%. When the feature is enabled, websites will be loaded without any of their images, thus reducing the amount of data downloaded per page.
Here’s how to enable it: In the Chrome app, pull down the three-dot menu and select Settings. Navigate down to the Data Saver option and toggle it on. Return to this option page in the future to see how much data the new mode has saved you.
The process is similar for iOS devices.
It’s really as simple as that. The lack of images may bother you at first, but if your data plan is really tight, then cutting your Web browsing data usage in half is definitely worth the inconvenience. Plus, Chrome is the fastest browser in overall usage.
Is this enough of a reason to get you switched over to Chrome? If not, what browser do you prefer and why? Tell us about it in the comments!
Image Credit: Chrome on Android by N Azlin Sha via Shutterstock
Visit our Marketing Nerds archive to listen to other Marketing Nerds podcasts!
In this week’s episode of Marketing Nerds, WordStream CTO and Founder, Larry Kim, joins SEJ Executive Editor Kelsey Jones to talk about Google AdWords’ Customer Match. Larry gave an overview of AdWords’ new feature, how businesses can use it, and why it’s better to choose niche PPC audiences over widespread ones.
Here are a few of transcribed excerpts from their discussion, but make sure to listen to the Podcast to hear their whole conversation!
What is Customer Match?
It’s a fantastic targeting option in AdWords. What’s so interesting about this is you can target individuals, like Kelsey or Larry, with ads. You need to take a step back to understand how crazy this is, in terms of being a game changer. In search advertising, PPC advertising, a search on Google, for example, Google AdWords. You’re buying keywords, but we have no idea who is actually searching behind those keywords.
We don’t know the identity of the person. Whether it’s Larry or Kelsey doing that search. Similarly, when you’re doing retargeting, which is another form of popular PPC advertising, you’re targeting people who have visited your website, but again, you don’t know whether or not it’s Kelsey or Larry. It’s some anonymous person who visited your site. What Customer Match does is it says, “Wait a minute. Your best business comes from people who you know.”
You can upload emails and IDs for specific people who you’re interested in. Because a lot of times when you’re just surfing the internet, you’ll have logged in to YouTube or logged in to Google Plus or logged into the Gmail or Google Drive. It’ll know that it’s you surfing. What it can do is then it’ll match a vendor’s ads according to the person who’s actually logged into the computer. Or the mobile phone.
That’s really interesting, because now there’s certainty over who you’re targeting. “Oh, this is Kelsey. We can give very specific ad copy.” Maybe you checked out a certain clothing but didn’t buy the thing last week. Then I can come up with a very specific ad copy that speaks to your specific state within my buying funnel. Do you see what I mean? Overall, it’s quite a game changer.
AdWords’ Customer Match vs. Facebook’s Custom Audience vs. Twitter’s Tailored Audience
The whole idea behind Customer Matching (“custom audience” for Facebook and “tailored audience” for Twitter) is basically the same concept of marketing ads to specific people. In order for this to work, the platform—either Twitter or Google or Facebook—needs to be able to match emails with users on their platforms. That’s called the match rate.
I was very curious to see how Google compared in terms of their match rate. Let’s say if you have a hundred emails randomly, how many of them will actually correspond to Facebook accounts or Google accounts or Twitter accounts?
I uploaded 357,000 emails to Google and got around a 51% percent match rate. I did the same list of emails, uploaded them to Facebook. Facebook was able to match just about 50% of them. It was essentially a tie within 1% of each other. The real loser was Twitter which, as much as I love Twitter, it’s kind of a basket case in terms of advertising. They were able to match on 10% of these people.
Obviously, if you could only pick one place to do this type of advertising, I would pick either Google or Facebook because they have such a high match rate of approximately 50% each. Google edged out Facebook, although I wouldn’t say that it was like a landslide or anything like that. It was within a too close to call kind of range.
When to Use Facebook’s Custom Audience over Google’s Customer Match
Well, they’re completely different in terms of the modality of the person seeing the ads. Google Customer Match Ad words is still targeting people searching for keywords. It’s just that you can target specific people for specific keywords.
Two things have to happen: Larry or Kelsey needs to search on Google for a certain keyword and then I’ll show them this specific ad that’s relevant to them. That’s traditional high commercial intent keywords. Where someone is specifically looking for something and just doesn’t know where to get it from.
For Facebook ads, it’s going to be your news feed ads and then think about your own Facebook news feeds. It’s going to be a little bit more casual, just FYI kind of stuff. It’s not as intense in terms of the commercial intent behind the person viewing the ads, but nevertheless it’ll still get out wide because the cost becomes so much cheaper on Facebook.
How Businesses Can Use Customer Match
The technology’s only about a month old, so we’re always learning new ways of how to use this thing. But, yes, we have a couple hundred customers using this technology and generally there are use cases that people use.
This has to do with targeting people according to where they are in the funnel. Think about your marketing innovation segmentations where you might have like,”Oh, this person took a trial.” Or, “This person read the white paper.” Or “This person just downloaded the white paper but didn’t take the next action.” Or “This person actually did the trial.”
Depending on where you are in the buying funnel and armed with that knowledge, you could segment your email list. Drive people from one stage of the funnel to the next stage of the funnel.
In terms of the campaign costs, it actually varies widely. Depending on what you’re promoting and how good the targeting is and how interesting the thing that you’re promoting is.
In both Facebook and Google ads, the cost per click is inversely proportional to the click-through rate. If something is very, very interesting to most of the people who are seeing it, then you’ll pay very, very little. If it’s very boring to people, then you’ll pay like an arm and a leg. If you nail the targeting using this Customer Match, you will definitely find lower cost per clicks than just generic targeting using keywords or remarketing.
What Works Well With Customer Match?
You should absolutely be pairing Customer Match with additional targeting options. Just because someone’s on your email list doesn’t mean that they’re a good prospect. Maybe 1% of the people on your email list are going to be the best buyers.
Facebook and Twitter offers the ability to segment, to narrow lists of emails. You can overlay additional targeting options. They fall into three categories. The first is Demographics, so that’s everything about you. Your age, your gender, your occupation, your job title, your parental status.
There’s Behaviors, so that’s what you do outside of Facebook or Twitter. You can target people who are buying complimentary products.
The third area has to do with Likes and Interests. Is he posting about babies or does he like a particular brand as well as that browsing history.
You combine the fact that A, the person was on your list to begin with and then overlay demographics, behaviors, and interests on top of that. Then you have a very, very narrow net that you’re casting here. If you spend $100, then I think you would find that it has a lot of leverage.
Underutilized AdWords Features
The two other most under utilized AdWords features, I believe, are Gmail ads and YouTube ads. YouTube ads are the clicks that play ahead of videos or even during and after videos. You can target those using Customer Match.
The interesting thing about that is people spend so many hours on YouTube a week. That’s a good place to get people in their downtime.
The same goes for Gmail. I can target emails to people based on their email. It’s like being able to send emails without having to send an email. It’s magic. I can target Gmail ads by email. I don’t have to worry about unsubscribes, I don’t have to worry about all those annoying things. I think it’s very effective stuff.
To listen to this Marketing Nerds podcast with Larry Kim and Kelsey Jones:
Download and listen to the full episode at the top of this post
Subscribe via iTunes
Sign up on IFTTT to receive an email whenever the Marketing Nerds podcast RSS feed has a new episode
Listen on Stitcher
Think you have what it takes to be a Marketing Nerd? If so, message Kelsey Jones on Twitter, or email her at kelsey [at] searchenginejournal.com.
Visit our Marketing Nerds archive to listen to other Marketing Nerds podcasts!
Image Credits
Featured Image: Image by Paulo Bobita In-post Photo #1: Axsimen/Shutterstock.com In-post Photo #2: Image by Aki Libo-on
YouTube has introduced a new permanent fixture to the iOS, Android, and desktop versions of its service — a ‘Trending’ tab that will surface viral videos in real time.
Going forward, this will essentially be the home on the web for viral videos, especially videos that are going viral right at this very moment.
“This new tab in your YouTube app delivers the top trending videos directly to your Android, iOS, and desktop device. It’s the best way to catch the videos, creators, and trends that people watch, share, and talk about each and every day.”
According to The Verge, YouTube’s Trending tab uses an algorithm based on comments, views, and “external references.” Instead of recommending popular videos on the homepage, this tab will be the new place to find popular/trending videos.
VentureBeat reports the content displayed in the Trending tab may vary based on location, and will in no way be influenced by a user’s viewing history. In addition, if some particularly explicit videos are trending,they may be manually filtered out of the tab.
Manual filtering suggests that YouTube can override the algorithm to add or remove content from the tab at any time. That may be why the recent YouTube Rewind video is pinned to the top of the Trending tab right now, even though it may not be the most viral video at the moment.
In any case, it looks like this tab will be a mostly reliable source for keeping up with videos that either have gone viral, or are going viral. It will be interesting to see what kind of effect being featured in Trending will on a video’s traffic. Are people actually going to pay attention to the trending tab? I guess we will see over time.
Featured Image Credit: Daxiao Productions / Shutterstock
Android offers lots of tweaks you can make to your phone without rooting. In Android 6.0, you can add new tiles to your Quick Settings menu in just a few steps.
First, enable Developer Options by going to Settings > About Phone, then scroll down to Build Number and tap it seven times. Next, open the Quick Settings menu by sliding down from the top of the screen twice.
You should see a little gear icon in the top-right of the screen, next to your user picture. Press and hold on that gear for about ten seconds and release. You will see a notification that the System UI Tuner has been enabled.
Now that the setup is done, install the Custom Quick Settings app on your device running Marshmallow. Open it and follow the instructions to make sure it can operate on your device. Then, you’ll need to tap the floating Plus button to add a new tile.
The app will guide you (per the video below) through the process. You need to manually add a new Broadcast Tile to the UI Tuner called “CUSTOMTILE0″ to let the app customize it. From there, you go back into the app and can change the tile’s name, icon (there are many built-in), and what action the system takes when you tap it.
You can assign up to two actions per tile: one for tapping, and one for a long-press. Possible uses include a system setting that isn’t available by default, launching a website with one tap, or quickly launching an app. The possibilities are up to you!
If your phone’s got Marshmallow, check out even more of the best Marshmallow features.
What tiles did you add to the Quick Settings? Do you use this menu often? Weigh in with a comment!
Image Credit: Denys Prykhodov via Shutterstock.com
Android is an open source operating system, but most of the apps and services aren’t available. What’s a free and open source software-loving person to do?
Well, it turns out there are a wide range of apps out there available to you. You won’t be able to do all the things you could with the Play Store, but you can still get a good amount of use out of your phone and use software that embraces material design.
Here are a dozen of the best open source Android apps to choose from, in no particular order. All are available in F-Droid, and most are also in the Play Store if you’re not concerned about using your device Google-free.
1) DuckDuckGo
Want to look for something online without handing over your interests to advertisers? Meet your Google replacement. DuckDuckGo is a search engine that cares about your privacy. The Android app doesn’t just look pretty, it lets you read articles inside its own internal browser, and the home page provides you with a look at current events happening across the web.
I enjoy this app so much more than I did the default Google Search app.
Download: DuckDuckGo for Android (F-Droid | Google Play)
2) AntennaPod
Listening to podcasts is a solid chunk of what I do with my phone, and fortunately, there’s a great open source option out there. AntennaPod isn’t quite as feature-rich as BeyondPod (my favorite Play Store option), but it has a modern look and gives me enough control to make sure feeds don’t auto-update over mobile data. That’s good enough for me.
Download: AntennaPod for Android (F-Droid | Google Play)
3) OsmAnd~
Part of buying a smartphone means you don’t have to lug around a dedicated GPS unit anymore. The thing is, most of the well-known options are all proprietary. Going open source means giving up access to Google Maps, Nokia Here, Sygic, and just about any other alternative you can think of.
Well, except for one. OsmAnd~ lets you download maps from OpenStreetMaps.org and save them to your device. You can save any number you want… from the entire world… for free. Searching for addresses can be a challenge, but if you pair the app with Address to GPS, then you should be good to go.
Download: OsmAnd~ for Android (F-Droid | Google Play)
4) Muzei
Muzei is one of the best live wallpapers around. The app blurs the background, only bringing the image into focus when you hold down on the screen. The settings let you adjust the amount of blur, and there is something satisfying about how the end result really highlights your app icons.
By default Muzei chooses a different painting for your wallpaper every day or so, but there are many other sources available, and you’re welcome to use your own photos.
Download: Muzei for Android (F-Droid | Google Play)
5) DashClock
DashClock is the solution to a dull home or lock screen. Use it to read email, check the weather, and keep track of alarms out of the box. When that is no longer enough, install any number of plug-ins to view content from third-party apps like Hangouts on the front of your locked phone.
Check your WiFi network, monitor battery life, and knock yourself out.
Download: DashClock for Android (F-Droid | Google Play)
6) Clip Stack
Copy. Paste. Cut. Paste. Copy. No, cut. Then paste. Paste again. Wait, no, I wanted something before that. Ugh, why did I cut? Where did I get that from?
Forget it. Open Clip Stack, browse through the history of clipboard items, and copy from there. Done.
Download: Clip Stack for Android (F-Droid | Google Play)
7) QKSMS
QKSMS is one of the many alternative SMS apps for folks who consider their default text messaging app too basic. Thing is, this one happens to be open source. The app was one of the early adopters of material design, and it’s highly theme-able.
There’s a night mode, plenty of customization options, and features to speed up your texting like QK reply — letting you respond without leaving the app you’re in.
Download: QKSMS for Android (F-Droid | Google Play)
8) Swiftnotes
Swiftnotes is a simplistic note-taking app like Google Keep without the online component. You give notes a name, body text, and a color, as if you were creating sticky notes. That’s it.
There are no tags or notifications or other forms of added complexity. If you just want to jot things down for later, this app is one to take note of.
Download: Swiftnotes for Android (F-Droid | Google Play)
9) Mirakel
Android has a ton of to-do list apps, but most aren’t open source. Fortunately, Mirakel is a capable and beautiful option. The app is feature-rich enough to provide filters and tags, set reminders, and rank each job’s priority.
There’s also a DashClock extension to put your to-dos on your lockscreen.
Download: Mirakel for Android (F-Droid | Google Play)
Download: Mirakel DashClock for Android (F-Droid | Google Play)
10) KISS Launcher
KISS Launcher takes all the distractions away from your home screen and replaces them with a single search bar that does everything. It launches apps. It dials numbers. It accesses settings. The memory requirements are low, and it does a good job of keeping it simple.
Download: KISS Launcher for Android (F-Droid | Google Play)
11) Material Audiobook Player
Material Audiobook Player provides a particularly pretty way to look at audiobooks on a modern Android device. It isn’t the most complete experience, but considering how visually unappealing many audiobook players are, this one feels like a breath of fresh air. Just make sure your collection of eBooks is DRM-free.
Download: Material Audiobook Player for Android (F-Droid | Google Play)
12) Amaze File Manager
Looking for a file manager? Amaze might just amaze you. It has the basics covered, and it comes with a few advanced features like samba support and root browsing. Also, it’s quite the looker.
Download: Amaze File Manager for Android (F-Droid | Google Play)
What Are Your Favorites?
Under the surface, Android remains an open source operating system. Proprietary software may clutter the ecosystem, but there are many good options out there for people looking for good free and open source apps.
Does proprietary code make you uncomfortable? What about being dependent on cloud services? Have you spent years waiting for a viable free and open source phone or tablet? Share your thoughts with us, and if one of your favorite apps is open source, give it a shout out!
Apple users have Siri, Windows 10 users can call upon Cortana, and Android users can use Ok Google. Ok Google can do a lot more than just look stuff up however, and it even rivals Siri in some ways.
Ok Google can be accessed by typically saying “Ok Google” or tapping the microphone button on the Google search bar on your Android tablet or phone.
It’s important to note that Ok Google is accessible if you have Google Now installed on your smartphone or tablet, so if you can’t access it, then you’ll first need to download and install Google Now from the Play Store if your version of Android supports it.
The Google Now Launcher is only available for Android 4.1 and above.
Alternatively, you can download and install the Google app and conduct voice searches on your Android or iOS device.
The Google app ensures you can use Ok Google even on iPhones and iPads.
Many users might already use Ok Google to look stuff up because it plugs right into the mighty search engine. What you might not realize, is that it can do so much more and is, in fact, a fairly full-featured digital personal assistant.
Today, we want to take a tour of many of the things you can do with Ok Google and show you how it can make your life just a little bit more convenient and easier.
Open Applications
With Ok Google, you can open applications without touching your device, simply say, “Ok Google, open Pandora” or “open Netflix” and it will dutifully open them on your device.
The ability to open applications means that you won’t have to hunt for them on your home screen(s).
If the application isn’t available, then you will have the option to download it from the Play Store.
Set Timers and Alarms
Need to set a quick timer for something you’re cooking? Maybe you want to take a short power nap. No problem, just tell Ok Google to “set a timer for 15 minutes” or “set an alarm for 6:30 PM” and that’s it.
When you start a timer, you simply specify the duration for your timer and it will begin automatically.
On the other hand, if you want to stop your timer or cancel your alarm, it seems that you have to still do so manually.
Define Words
Not sure what something means or even how to spell it? You can ask Ok Google to define it for you so you always use the right word in the right place.
Now the next time you’re unsure whether you’re using the right word in the right context, you can just ask Ok Google.
Create Events and See Your Agenda
If you want to create events such as meetings and appointments, then you simply tell Ok Google to “create a meeting with so-and-so on x day at y time.”
If you want to see you agenda for the day, then ask Ok Google to show it to you by saying “see my agenda for [today][tomorrow][Friday]”.
This is a great way to stay on top of things. Not only will you be able to add events to your calendar so you don’t miss important meetings and appointments, but you can also review what’s upcoming so even if you haven’t created alerts, at least you’ll see everything laid out before you.
Call, Text, and Message People
Two other things you can do with Ok Google, both of which are similar and thus lumped under the same heading are the ability to call and text people.
Just like with Siri, you can use Ok Google to call and text people, thus assuring that if you’re driving, your eyes never leave the road.
This works just as it does with Siri. Simply queue up Ok Google and then ask it to call a contact or a number or text someone. Ok Google will either prompt you for further information, or you can dictate the message contents when you give the command.
Once you have your text message ready, you can send it on its way. Additionally, you can have Ok Google read your text messages back to you, which means that your eyes never need to leave what you’re doing.
You can also use Ok Google to send Hangouts messages as well as post to Twitter and Facebook.
Send Emails
Like sending texts, you can send emails. Just tell Ok Google to “send an email to [recipient]” and then you can either dictate the email or wait for Google to prompt you.
When you’re done, simply send the new email on its way. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that you can use Ok Google to read emails to you, but it will display them if you ask it to show you your emails.
Navigate
We all know Google does navigation really well and you can use Ok Google to expedite it by telling it to map to addresses, businesses, and other locations.
So, you can have Google map you to the nearest coffee shop or car wash or navigate to a specific address with greater ease than typing it into your phone.
Check the Distance from Something and Between Places
Want to know how far apart two places are, such as if you need to plan your travel time for an upcoming trip? Ask Ok Google to show you the distance from point A to point B, and then you’ll also have further navigation options as well.
Once Google shows you the distance between two places, you’ll have the option to route a course.
You don’t have to look up places that are driveable either, you can ask Google to show you how far it is to another country, or a planet, or anything else that it can provide you distances between.
See What Places are Nearby
Let’s say you want to see where the nearest car washes are or a certain type of restaurant.
Not a problem, just ask Ok Google to show you what businesses are nearby or in the general area.
Look up Interesting Facts
Being plugged into Google is extremely convenient when it comes to looking up all sorts of interesting facts.
The only thing that limits you when it comes to looking up interesting facts is your imagination.
Just ask Ok Google what you need to know and chances are you’ll get a quick answer. You can ask all sorts of things such as what time it is in another country, where your favorite celebrity was born, how long it would take to travel to Mars, and so on.
Perform Translations
If you want to translate something, you can ask Google to provide you with it.
Google can translate into dozens of languages so you’re never left wanting for how to say a word or phrase.
Google can translate dozens of languages, so whether you’re looking for a phrase to say in French, Chinese, or Swahili, Google can probably show you how to say it.
Check the Weather
If you want to know what the weather is going to be like in your location, or any other location, then simply ask Ok Google to show you what the weather is or what it will be like on such-and-such a day.
You’re not simply limited to checking the weather locally though, if you’re traveling and want to know what the weather is like at your destination, then you can quickly find out.
Finally, you don’t have to explicitly ask for the weather forecast. You can ask something like “Will I need an umbrella tomorrow?” and Ok Google will let you know if it is going to be sunny or if it will rain.
Perform Image Searches
If you want to look up images, then you can use the full resources of a Google Image search.
Just ask Ok Google to show you images for your search term. In this example, we asked Google to look up images for “geeks.”
Perform Conversions and Calculations
Use Google to perform quick conversions and calculations.
You can even use it to convert currency, and since you’re plugged into Google, you know you’ll get up-to-the-minute results.
You can also do calculations, such as multiplication, division, square roots, or ask Ok Google how much of a tip to leave your server.
Set Reminders
Want to be reminded about something but don’t want to create an event? Just ask Ok Google to set a reminder for something you need to remember.
If you just want to add something to your to-do list, then you can say “remind me to do [this or that]” but if you want to create a more detailed reminder, then you can add a date and time.
Check Your Stocks
If you have stocks or you just like to follow a company’s progress, then you can ask Ok Google to show you how they’re doing.
Simply ask Ok Google to “Show me how Apple’s stock did today” and it will present it to you in a convenient, easy-to-read result.
Change Settings and Control Your Device
You can use Ok Google to control your device and change settings, here we ask it to turn on the flashlight.
Obviously, you can affect all kinds of settings as well, such as Wi-Fi, which is especially convenient if your mobile connection is unreliable or vice-versa.
Control all sorts of settings including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and others.
You can try this out with all your settings to make it a lot more easier to use your phone or tablet to make quick adjustments. Want to take a picture or shoot a quick video? Ask Ok Google to “take a picture” or “shoot a video” and that’s it.
Create Notes
Notes are different from things like reminders in that you can have Ok Google retain bits of information you want to remember. Notes are meant to be more long lasting.
Google Keep is just one Note-taking app you can use.
If you have more than one note-taking app, then you’ll be prompted for which one you want to use. In the previous screenshot, we’re using Google Keep.
Other Stuff
There’re a quite a few other things you can do with Ok Google, some of which include:
Track packages provided you have the tracking information in an email message.
Show you which bills are due.
Display your flight info (it needs to be in an email message).
Ask for sport scores and team schedules.
Play and control music from Google Play Music.
Ask where and what movies are playing.
As you can see, Ok Google is similarly useful to Siri in many ways and quite versatile to boot. Additionally, because it is plugged into Google, you can search for anything.
Overall, Ok Google has come a long way from when it was simply a convenient way to map routes and search for stuff. As time goes on, it’s gaining more and more skills that are giving the likes of Siri a run for its money. That said, unlike Siri, Ok Google isn’t yet widely available across all of Google’s devices such as the Chromecast (Siri is available on both the new Apple TV as well as the Apple Watch).
In any event, if you use any of the latest Android phones or tablets, then Ok Google is more than likely going to available to you.
We hope you found his article informative and useful, if you have any questions or comments you would like to contribute, please leave your feedback in our discussion forum.
Modern iPhones still ship with 16 GB of storage if you don’t pay extra for more — and you probably should. Higher-end Android phones usually at least offer 32 GB, but 16 GB isn’t uncommon. Buy one of these and you may need to change your habits to stay within the limits.
It’s easy to fill up a 16 GB phone by taking photos, recording videos, syncing music, and downloading large apps — especially large games. Here’s how to maximize that space if you’re not paying extra for more storage.
Keep Photos From Filling Up Your Phone
If you regularly take photos — and especially if you regularly record videos — those will eventually fill up your phone’s storage. You can prevent that from happening by regularly getting your photos off of your phone.
Google Photos does a great job of this. It offers free, unlimited storage of your photos and videos with your Google account. It’s excellent even on iPhones, as Apple just offers a free 5 GB or all your photos, backups, and other data. Install the app, tell it to sync, and it can upload your photos to the cloud. Better yet, the recently added “free up device storage” feature allows the app to remove photos and videos from your device after uploading them. It’ll put them in your Google account — where you can access them from the app or a web browser — and get them off your device’s limited storage.
On iPhone, you could also choose to use iCloud Photo Library and enable the “Optimize iPhone Storage” option to save a bit of storage, but it won’t save quite as much as using Google Photos and removing the photos entirely. You’ll find these options under Settings > iCloud > Photos. Be sure to disable the photo stream feature, too — this will prevent 1000 photos from being synced to your device.
Live photos also use more space, so you may want to consider taking old-fashioned live photos and converting those live photos to still photos. If you upload your live photos to Google Photos, they’ll just become still photos.
You could also just do it the old-fashioned way, syncing photos to your computer and deleting them from your device. Be sure you back up your photos if you do this. Either way, if you take photos regularly and don’t have much storage to go around, it’s important to keep the amount of space used by photos down.
Avoid Installing Too Many Games At Once
It’s easy to install the latest game or apps you hear about and just leave them installed. But this can use quite a bit of storage — modern smartphone games may use 1 GB or more of data each. Install just a handful of big games and your phone will be full. Rather than leaving a huge amount of games installed, just have a few installed at a time. You can always redownload them from the app store for free, even if you purchased them.
Like on a computer with a small hard drive, you’ll need to keep the amount of software you have installed down to save space. Use your operating system’s storage overview screen — covered below — to see the apps using the most space.
Stream Your Music Instead of Storing It On Your Phone
If you’re still syncing a large music collection to your smartphone, you might want to stop. Rather than doing this, try relying on a streaming service for your music.
Even if you don’t want to use a subscription service like Spotify, Google Play Music, or Apple Music, you can upload your personal music collection to the cloud for free and stream it to your device whenever you have an Internet connection. For offline listening when you don’t have a connection, you can sync some of the music to your device using one of these apps.
This will give you access to that large music collection on your device as long as you have an Internet connection, saving storage space.
Manage Your Phone’s Storage
You’ll need to think about your storage and keep an eye on it. Both iPhones and Android phones have a built-in storage information screen that will show you exactly what is using storage on your device, breaking it down by app. Each app takes a certain amount of storage just for that app, while apps can also cache data for offline use.
To see exactly what’s using up storage, visit the appropriate screen in your operating system.
On an iPhone, open the Settings app and navigate to General > Storage & iCloud Usage > Manage Storage. Tap an app to see more information.
On an Android phone, open the Settings app and tap “Storage.” Tap a category to see more information.
If an app’s cache is using quite a bit of storage, you may be able to clear it from within the app or operating system. You can always just uninstall and reinstall the app, too.
These screens will tell you exactly what’s using up storage. You should head here whenever your phone complains you’re running low on storage, but you can also visit this screen and save space before it gets that low.
Get an SD Card, Maybe
Some Android phones include SD card support, although no iPhones do. If your phone has an SD card slot, you can purchase a MIcro SD card and insert it into your phone to get additional storage space for your data. Micro SD cards are fairly cheap, and you can get buy a 32 GB one for around $10 on Amazon. 64 GB and 128 GB SD cards are also much less expensive than paying for a phone with more integrated storage.
This is only an option for some phones, but it’s an excellent way to extend a phone’s storage if the manufacturer did provide an SD card slot.
If you think you’ll need more storage space or just don’t want to worry about micromanaging it, it’s a good idea to pay extra for more storage when you buy your phone. It’s still possible to live with a 16 GB phone, even if you’re a demanding user — it’ll just take a bit more planning and some extra time to occasionally micromanage your storage.
Ideally, we’ll see Apple increase the base amount of storage on iPhones to 32 GB, like most Android manufacturers have. Expensive smartphones shouldn’t have such paltry amounts of storage.