Enhance your Public Alerts to surface on Google Search

-Do you want to maximize the reach of your emergency alerts?
Hi, my name is Stephanie,
and I'm part of the Search Partnerships team at Google.
-Hi, I'm Cherry, and I'm from Search Engineering.
This Lightning Talk is made for authorities who manage and disseminate emergency alerts.
What kind of emergency?
Think weather events such as floods and storms,
but also other hazard types, like power outages.
GOOGLE SEARCH CENTRAL LIGHTNING TALKS
IMPROVING YOUR GOOGLE PUBLIC ALERTS VISIBILITY
-In this video, we'll walk you through
how to provide emergency alerting for Google Search.
We'll focus on practical steps you can take to ensure your alerts are displayed
to the right users at the right time on Google Search
to maximize your reach and user impact during critical events.
GOOGLE PUBLIC ALERTS
-During disasters, Google disseminates emergency messages
and makes critical information accessible on the Google Public Alerts platform.
Your alerts may show up on Google products,
such as Google Search, Google Maps and sometimes also mobile notifications.
In this video, we'll focus on Google Search.
On Search, your alerts may show up in multiple formats
when users are searching for relevant queries.
COMMON ALERTING PROTOCOL (CAP)
-For your alerts to be disseminated on Google Public Alerts,
you need to create an XML-based Common Alerting Protocol feed,
or CAP for short.
You can think of CAP as a universal digital language for emergencies,
a standardized way to send out alerts about any type of emergency
in a consistent way
so that communication channels like phone,
TV, radio or even road signs can easily disseminate them.
Check out the link in the description for more details.
PUBLIC ALERTS ON GOOGLE SEARCH
For your alerts to be used by Search, the alerts have to be public.
Here's how.
One: format your data using CAP.
Two: publish your alert feed, basically a stream of all your alerts.
Then notify Google via the link below.
For more details on how to get started, refer to the link in the description.
WHY CAP QUALITY MATTERS FOR SEARCH VISIBILITY
-As a search engine,
Google surfaces your CAP alerts in response to relevant user queries.
The accuracy of this process depends heavily
on how well Google can understand and classify your alerts.
Therefore, it's really important
for you enhance your CAP messages with the best practices in this video
to ensure clarity and comprehensiveness.
That way, you can help us classify your alerts correctly
and ensure that your critical information surfaces for relevant searches,
reaching those who need it most.
ENHANCING CAP ALERTS
-For a more seamless integration,
we strongly recommend you use standardized OASIS codes.
You can check out the list of available OASIS event codes on the screen.
If your event type isn't listed,
you can make a recommendation
to the OASIS Emergency Management Technical Committee
to include them.
-It's important to use accepted values for severity, urgency and certainty.
You can find the accepted values for each of these elements on the screen.
If you use unknown values for these elements,
we won't be able to surface these alerts to users
because we won't be able to categorize your alerts accurately.
-For the description element,
write concise, easy-to-understand descriptions.
Include all relevant information about the situation
to keep the public informed.
Answer users' critical questions as much as possible:
What's happening?
Where? How bad is it? What to expect?
Use proper punctuation, capitalization and diacritics.
Provide accurate translations if you're displaying alerts in multiple languages.
Proofreading is key.
Carefully review the text to catch and fix errors.
Use formatted, human-readable times and dates instead of timestamps designed for machines,
like Unix timestamps in the description.
Avoid repeating the same information in multiple places in the same alert.
Avoid using technical jargon and complicated sentences.
High-quality text builds trust, enhances readability,
and ensures sensitive data is communicated effectively to the user.
-Provide precise alert areas
by using polygons instead of geocodes to define the affected area.
Avoid overly large polygons, for example.
Sending a single alert to warn all 50 states in the US isn't feasible
and also won't be accurate for the users.
Instead, split them into smaller and more targeted alerts relevant to each area.
Also, please ensure your polygons stay within your jurisdiction.
-You can publish an early warning now, for example,
for a flood that's expected to start tomorrow and continue for two days.
Include the expected onset time of the event and expiration time of the alert
using "onset" and "expires" elements.
If you need to remove an alert,
simply removing the alert from the feed won't remove it from Google
if the alert hasn't yet expired.
To remove an alert from Google,
set an appropriate expiry time
or send an alert update with a new expiration time.
-If you support more than one language or region,
use a single alert with multiple info blocks,
one for each supported language.
On the screen,
you'll see an example of an alert for German in Germany and English in the UK.
It's also important to use the correct language and region codes:
align your language and region code to the ISO format listed on the screen
and in the video description.
Note that reserved or special country codes, such as "EU" or "UK", won't work.
Also, using language code for region code won't work, either.
Check the link in the description for a comprehensive list.
-By implementing these recommendations,
you'll significantly improve the quality of your CAP messages
and their compatibility with Google Search.
This ensures that your vital information reaches the right people at the right time,
helping to keep communities safe and informed.
BONUS: MORE VISIBILITY ON GOOGLE SEARCH
The reach on Google Search goes beyond the alert-related features.
As you manage emergency alerts, public warnings and other related content,
you might be interested in having your website
show up on Google organic search results.
Visit the SEO Starter Guide
to further improve your appearance and potentially ranking on Google Search.
Link on the screen and in the description.
SEO STARTER GUIDE G.CO/SEOSTARTERGUIDE
-Remember, for detailed guidelines and examples,
please refer to the Google Public Alerts documentation.
-Thank you for your commitment to public safety,
and thanks for watching this video.
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