Google announced new applications of its MUM technology, including multimodal search with Google Lens, Related topics in videos and other new search result features, at its Search On event on Wednesday. While these announcements are not an overhaul of how Google Search works, they do provide users with new ways to search and give SEOs new visibility opportunities as well as SERP and search changes to adapt to.

What is MUM?

Google first previewed its Multitask Unified Model (MUM) at its I/O event in May. Similar to BERT, it’s built on a transformer architecture but is reportedly 1,000 times more powerful and capable of multitasking to connect information for users in new ways.

In its first public application in June, MUM identified 800 variations of COVID vaccine names across 50 languages in a matter of seconds. That application, however, did not show off the technology’s multimodal capabilities. The announcements made at Search On provide a better glimpse at MUM’s multimodal potential.

MUM enhancements to Google Lens

Google demoed a new way to search that combines MUM technology with Google Lens, enabling users to take a photo and add a query.

In the “point-and-ask” example above, a user takes a photo of an unknown bicycle part and asks how to fix it. Google is able to match the search to an exact moment in a video, which helps users find the right information without having to manually research bike parts and then conduct a separate search for a tutorial.

In its announcement, the company provided another potential use case (shown above): Users can take a picture of a pattern on a shirt and ask Google to find the same pattern on socks. While users could simply describe the pattern they’re looking for with text, they may not find the exact pattern or they may have to filter through many results before locating the right one. This capability will be arriving in early 2022, a Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land.

Related topics in videos

Google is also applying MUM to show related topics that aren’t explicitly mentioned in a video.

In the example above, the video does not explicitly say “macaroni penguin’s life story,” but Google’s systems are able to understand that the topics are related and suggest the query to the user. This functionality will be launching in English in the coming weeks, and the company will add more visual enhancements over the coming months. It will first be available for YouTube videos, but Google is also exploring ways to make this feature available for other videos.

Features that will eventually leverage MUM

Google also unveiled some new SERP features that are based on other technologies, but the company expects to improve them with MUM over the coming months.

“Things to know.” This feature lists various aspects of the topic the user searched for. Things to know can enable users to see the different dimensions other people typically search for, which may help them get to the information they’re looking for faster.

In the example above, Google shows aspects of the query (“acrylic painting”) that searchers are likely to look at first, like a step-by-step guide or acrylic painting using household items.

“The information that shows up in Things to know, such as featured snippets, is typically information that users would see by directly issuing a search for that subtopic,” a Google spokesperson said. This feature will also be launching in the coming months.

Refine and broaden searches. The “Refine this search” and “Broaden this search” features enable users to get more specific with a topic or zoom out to more general topics.

Continuing with the “acrylic painting” example from above, the Refine this search section shows suggestions for acrylic painting ideas, courses and so on, while the Broaden this search section shows related, but more general topics, like styles of painting. These features will also launch in English in the coming months.

More announcements from Search On

In addition to the MUM-related announcements above, Google also previewed a more “visually browsable” interface for certain search results pages, enhancements to its About this result box, a more “shoppable” experience for apparel-related queries, in-stock filters for local product searches, as well as the ability to make all images on a page searchable via Google Lens. You can learn more about those features in our concurrent coverage, “Google search gets larger images, enhances ‘About this result,’ gets more ‘shoppable’ and more.”

Why we care

When Google first unveiled MUM, it touted the technology’s multimodal capabilities and power with abstract examples and no rollout dates. Now, we have a better idea of what MUM can actually do and a roadmap of features to expect.

The enhancements to Google Lens are a new, and perhaps more intuitive, way to leverage multimodal search than the industry has seen before. The e-commerce example Google provided shows how this feature may help the search engine become more of a player in that sector while making it even more important for merchants to apply product schema and submit accurate data feeds so that their products can show up on Google.

The other MUM-related announcements (Related topics in videos, Things to know, Refine this search and Broaden this search) are all about enabling users to learn more through related topics. These features may present SEOs with the opportunity to get in front of users by connecting a search to another related search or a video to another related video or search that they’re ranking for. 

The interconnectivity of Google’s search results and features may offer new ways for users to arrive at whatever they’re seeking. If Google discloses how someone arrives on a publisher’s content (such as through Refine this search suggestions, for example), this could reveal new user journeys (and the business opportunities that may come with them) to optimize for. These features are also another step further away from the ten blue links of old, and SEOs will have to adapt to the changes while making the most out of the new visibility opportunities these features have to offer.

In addition, these announcements, along with the other Search On announcements (visual browsing with larger images and more shoppable search features) may provide users with new and more intuitive ways to search, which can help the company maintain its position as the market leader.

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Search Engine Land’s daily brief features daily insights, news, tips, and essential bits of wisdom for today’s search marketer. If you would like to read this before the rest of the internet does, sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox daily.

Good morning, Marketers, how do you feel about TikTok?

We’ve had the discussion internally with the Search Engine Land editorial team, and I’ve let everyone know I’m a fan. I absolutely love the platform and the creative that comes out of it. Other apps have tried to replicate it (see: Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube), but none have captured the pizzazz of TikTok. Maybe it’s the demographic. Only we olds are stuck using Facebook and Instagram. 

The company recently announced that it surpassed one billion monthly users, so it’s a huge opportunity for advertisers, especially those targeting that younger audience. But it’s one that we have to get really right to succeed.

But sometimes TikTok creators are the leaders here and brands take the cue. I recently read an article in Esquire about how the “Fancy Like” TikTok trend was co-opted by Applebee’s marketers to become their latest TV commercial campaign. And it works!

Not only has TikTok helped surface Applebee’s but it’s helped the country artist Walker Hayes top the charts as well. This is just the latest trend. One TikTok designer “redesigned” many popular logos, and so many brands hopped on board. 

The lesson is sometimes the innovators are in nontraditional places and that UGC is still a huge opportunity for brands. Now pardon me, off to practice my next TikTok dance…

Carolyn Lyden,
Director of Search Content

Microsoft Advertising’s new Credit card ads continue its streak of vertical-specific products

Microsoft Advertising has introduced Credit card ads as an open beta, the company announced Tuesday. Credit card ads will appear on the right rail of Bing search results and run alongside mainline text ad placements. These ads can trigger for queries like brand names, card categories and credit levels. Credit card ads are dynamically generated based on advertisers’ data feeds and keywords are not required. They will become available this week to advertisers targeting customers in the U.S. and Canada.

Why we care. This format may be useful for credit card advertisers, like banks, brands and comparison sites, to showcase their promotions. They may also offer increased efficiency for this particular segment of advertisers: “In early flights of Credit card ads, advertisers so far have seen 70% lower cost per acquisition,” Microsoft said.

From an industry standpoint, Microsoft Advertising is on a streak of launching vertical-specific, feed-based products that are unique to the company — in addition to Credit card ads, the company has rolled out open betas for Tours and Activities ads and Automotive ads over the last six months. The platform’s strategy of appealing to advertisers with automated ad formats tailored specifically to their industry may help it achieve wider adoption and increase its market share.

Read more here.

More product and feature announcements from Google Ads this week

Along with the data-driven attribution announcement from Monday, Google Ads made a few other product and features announcements all at once this week. Here’s the latest to keep you in the loop:

• Engaged-view conversions for display: A more robust non-click conversion measurement. Engaged-view conversions allow you to measure conversions that take place after someone views 10 seconds or more of your ad, but doesn’t click, and then converts within a set amount of days.
• TrueView for action to become Video action campaigns: Starting early 2022, all existing TrueView for action campaigns will automatically upgrade to Video action campaigns. As a reminder, September 30, 2021 is the last day to create a new TrueView for action campaign and any existing TrueView for action ads will continue to run until early next year. Moving forward, advertisers can create Video action campaigns using the responsive ad group type during campaign set-up.
• Update to sexually explicit content policy: In December 2021, Google Ads sexually explicit content policy violations will be updated to egregious policy violations. Egregious policy violations result in account suspension upon detection and without prior warning. Google will begin enforcing the policy update on December 1, 2021, with full enforcement ramping up over approximately 4 weeks.
• Send non-personalized ad requests to third-party RTB buyers: Beginning on October 21, 2021, Google will start a phased rollout to enable publishers to begin sending bid requests for publishers’ non-personalized and restricted data processing ad requests to the third-party RTB (real-time bidding) buyers. To protect user privacy, RTB protocol fields that are designed to be used to share user identifiers (e.g., google_user_id) will not be populated in these bid requests. OThe high-level phased rollout plan can be viewed here. The phased rollout plan set out on that page will be updated from time to time, so please review this resource periodically.

Ecommerce SEO guide: Google’s latest documentation for SEOs and developers

With COVID forcing many retailers online, there are more ecommerce options than ever. Google Search Central recently released new guidelines for developers to help improve search visibility for ecommerce sites. 

“When you share your ecommerce data and site structure with Google, Google can more easily find and parse your content, which allows your content to show up in Google Search and other Google surfaces. This can help shoppers find your site and products,” said the guide.

The seven pages include information on the following:

1. Where ecommerce content can appear on Google
2. Share your product data with Google
3. Include structured data relevant to ecommerce
4. How to launch a new ecommerce website
5. Designing a URL structure for ecommerce sites
6. Help Google understand your ecommerce site structure
7. Pagination, incremental page loading, and their impact on Google Search

Why we care. With many businesses starting ecommerce websites for the first time in the past year or so, this guide can help ensure that they’re following the best practices to get their products seen in the varying search engines Google provides. It also gives SEOs who focus on ecommerce documentation to show their clients and stakeholders to help get their recommendations for better ecommerce SEO implemented. 

Read more here.

Search Shorts: Google hosts Search On virtual event today (and we’ve got your coverage), plus don’t forget to take our quick robots.txt survey

Don’t miss Google’s Search On today. Want to know what’s next for search? At this virtual event, Google will “share how we’re making Google more helpful for the trillions of questions we see every year, whether you’re looking for a simple answer, to explore a new topic or find the right product for you.” 

And, of course, stay tuned to Search Engine Land for the latest Search On coverage and what it means for you, the search marketer.

Don’t forget to take our robots.txt survey. Should robots.txt support a feature for no indexation? Take the survey. “I’d like to avoid adding more directives. I’m still not aware of common issues caused by this documented functionality,” said John Mueller.

What We’re Reading: We’ve curated our picks from across the web so you can retire your feed reader.

• How to do keyword research for YouTube – Yoast
• What Can You Update in Hotels Knowledge Panel – Online Ownership
• Reporting and the Journey to Advanced Analytics – ClickInsight
• Types of machine learning models – Think with Google
• 13 questions to ask your next PPC agency – Vertical Leap

The post Fancy like🕺… why brands should pay attention to TikTok appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Search Engine Land’s daily brief features daily insights, news, tips, and essential bits of wisdom for today’s search marketer. If you would like to read this before the rest of the internet does, sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox daily.

Good morning, Marketers, your reputation precedes you.

What does the web have to say about your business? What’s your online reputation look like these days? Platforms like Google have been making efforts to increase transparency so that users have all the information they need to stay safe, but also to protect themselves from increased regulatory scrutiny.

On the PPC side, we’re seeing this play out in Google’s “About this advertiser” initiative (more on that below). On the organic side, the search engine launched the “About this result” box in February and, over the summer, expanded it to include why it ranked a specific search result.

Although users probably aren’t inspecting these details before every click from the SERP, all the information is available to them, which means that it’s easier for them to find out more about your brand. If you’re in a highly competitive space, and/or if your reputation isn’t stellar, the information could cost you conversions. And, with consumer preference and regulatory trends the way they are, platforms will most likely be releasing more of these features to take some of the heat off. If that’s scary for you, perhaps it’s time to audit your online reputation and business practices to make the necessary changes before it’s too late.

George Nguyen,
Editor

Google Ads announces machine learning-based data-driven attribution models in new privacy landscape

“In a move away from last-click, data-driven attribution [DDA] will soon be the default attribution model for all new Google Ads conversion actions,” tweeted Ads Liaison Ginny Marvin on Monday morning. As Google works toward a more privacy-focused search experience for users, it’s also adjusting the available attribution models for advertisers.

DDA works by looking at all the touchpoints, like clicks and video engagements, on your Search (including Shopping), YouTube and Display ads in Google Ads to compare the paths of customers who converted with ones who didn’t. The model then identifies patterns among those interactions that lead to conversations. Over the coming months, Google Ads will be migrating existing conversion actions to DDA for many advertisers over the coming months, Marvin said.

Why we care. Attribution has long been an issue for marketers. This conundrum is especially salient as FLoC threatens to take away even more data from search advertisers — leaving them cobbling together data on their own. Google Ad’s machine learning attribution model seems to be Google’s solution to this lack of data. “Privacy-centric, DDA trains on real conversion paths & uses machine learning to measure and model conversion credits across touchpoints, even when cookies are missing,” added Marvin.

Additionally, DDA was previously only available to accounts with enough conversions in their recent history. Now, all accounts can run it and it’s replacing last-click as the default.

Many advertisers have claimed that the lack of data and reliance on machine learning makes their jobs harder (how can we optimize when we don’t know exactly what is causing success or failure?). This is another case where they will have to just trust the information that Google Ads is giving them without seeing the inside of the process. However, if done well, it could help many advertisers better understand which campaigns and ads are contributing to overall success throughout the funnel.

Read more here.

Should robots.txt support a feature for no indexation? Take the survey

Have you ever blocked a page from being crawled, yet still wanted it indexed? Eric Enge, SEO veteran and general manager at Perficient Digital, says that he’s never encountered such a situation in his 20+ years in the industry.

A few professionals have taken this idea to Google’s John Mueller, asking whether the company has considered making it so that robots.txt files don’t just block crawling, but also indexation: “That would be a significant change in expectations (and yes, we do think about these things regardless). Do you have some examples where this would cause a visible improvement in search?” Mueller responded. “I’d like to avoid adding more directives. I’m still not aware of common issues caused by this documented functionality … SEOs worry about indexing, but usually these URLs only rank for site:-queries (or if there isn’t other, better content on the site), so it feels artificial?”

What do YOU think? Would it be helpful to have a feature in Robots.txt that allowed you to specify the pages you don’t want to have indexed? Take our quick three-question poll and let us know what you think.

SMX Next Super Early Bird rates end this Saturday

With October right around the corner, marketers should be building out their roadmap for 2022. At SMX Next, happening November 9–10, we hope to help you overcome the search marketing challenges you’re currently facing as well as prepare you for what’s next. 

On the SEO side, there’ll be sessions covering Python SEO, auditing your Core Web Vitals and ranking in Discover, News and Web Stories, to name a few. PPC practitioners that attend can learn about incrementality testing, advanced modeling for better forecasting as well as how to develop an RSA strategy as ETAs go by the wayside.

As a former content marketer, I’m particularly excited about our session on the future of content creation, in which we’ll learn how to generate hundreds of new content ideas using data analysis. And, as a member of the search industry, I consider it an honor to present to you career development sessions on effective mentorship programs and what to look for when hiring SEOs.

There are way more sessions that you’ll be able to view live or on-demand, and if you register before 11:59 p.m. ET this Saturday, October 2, you’ll be able to take all those learnings back to your company and with you for the rest of your career, at the lowest possible rate. I hope to see you there!

‘About this advertiser’ initiative now includes Advertisers Pages for Google Ads

Last year, Google launched an identity verification program for advertisers, and with that came the “About the advertiser” disclosure. Last week, the company expanded on this transparency measure by adding advertiser pages that enable users to see the ads a specific verified advertiser has run over the past 30 days. This expansion will be rolling out on YouTube and Google Search in the coming months.

Why we care. The advertiser page gives PPC experts the opportunity to show the integrity of their advertising to users but also leaves a trail of previous advertisements. This will hopefully help keep advertisers in compliance with Google’s ad policies and encourage them to think about how their ad history affects any current ads. It seems like there might be an opportunity for competitors to report ad violations (how would consumers know what violates Google’s ads policies?), but that seems like a super niche use case for this feature.

Read more here.

An attribute for Latino-owned businesses, and jokes that aren’t really jokes

The Latino-owned GMB attribute may be on the way. Google My Business profile managers may already be familiar with the women-led, Asian-owned or veteran-led profile attributes (to name just a few), and it looks like the platform will be adding a Latino-owned attribute soon. Tip of the hat to Colan Nielsen for bringing this to our attention.

The metaverse is an environment created by marketers…for marketers? “Marketers often go into new experiences with brand myopia, over-inflating how much people actually want to engage with their brands,” said Marketoonist creator Tom Fishburne. But, as my colleague Chris Wood so concisely put it, “Brands should experiment with new platforms when a sufficient number of their customers are there.”

John’s got jokes. I do believe John Mueller is satirizing Internet 4.0 and dunking on spammy email outreach tactics all in the same tweet.

The post Data-driven attribution to become the default in Google Ads; Tuesday’s daily brief appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Microsoft Advertising has introduced Credit card ads as an open beta, the company announced Tuesday. Credit card ads will become available this week to advertisers targeting customers in the U.S. and Canada. Over the last six months, the company has also launched ad formats specifically for the travel and leisure and automotive sectors.

Where and when Credit card ads can appear. Credit card ads appear on the right rail of Bing search results and run alongside mainline text ad placements. These ads can trigger for queries like brand name, card category and credit level.

How Credit card ads work. Credit card ads are dynamically generated based on advertisers’ data feeds. The feed file should contain business data like the card issuer, annual fee and any sign-up bonuses. Keywords are not required and Microsoft Advertising does not need to crawl your site to generate content for this ad format.

How to get started. To register for the open beta, contact your Microsoft Advertising representative or enroll at this link.

Why we care. This format may be useful for credit card advertisers, like banks, brands and comparison sites, to showcase their promotions. They may also offer increased efficiency for this particular segment of advertisers: “In early flights of Credit card ads, advertisers so far have seen 70% lower cost per acquisition,” Microsoft said.

From an industry standpoint, Microsoft Advertising is on a streak of launching vertical-specific, feed-based products that are unique to the company — in addition to Credit card ads, the company has rolled out open betas for Tours and Activities ads and Automotive ads over the last six months. The platform’s strategy of appealing to advertisers with automated ad formats tailored specifically to their industry may help it achieve wider adoption and increase its market share.

The post Microsoft Advertising’s new Credit card ads continue its streak of vertical-specific products appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Search Engine Land’s daily brief features daily insights, news, tips, and essential bits of wisdom for today’s search marketer. If you would like to read this before the rest of the internet does, sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox daily.

Good morning, Marketers and no one likes bugs.

Yesterday morning I found some tiny ants under my shower mat. I freaked out and smushed one with my finger and washed it down the bathroom sink. My daughter has been walking for a while now, so there’s a high chance that she’d find and eat a bug. I felt relieved until my husband told me that the ants released a pheromone upon being smushed that told the other ants where to find its… smushed self. So I, in essence, invited more bugs.

That’s kind of how this week has felt with Google products. If you’re in SEO and PPC, it’s been the week of bugs — one right after the other. We finally got Search Console data back yesterday after a reporting bug meant almost six days of no data for some marketers (more on that below).

Then, Wednesday featured a Google Ads outage bug “which caused some ads to stop serving temporarily. The issue has been resolved and no action is required,” said Ads liaison Ginny Marvin.

While both issues have been resolved, bugs can be a real problem for marketers and the clients and stakeholders they work for. It highlights why clear communication is critical — not just between marketers and stakeholders, but between Google and marketers, as well.

Carolyn Lyden,
Director of Search Content

Phrase and broad match keywords that are identical to a query are now preferred

When Google announced that it was expanding phrase match to include broad match modifier traffic earlier this year, it told advertisers that an exact match keyword that’s identical to a query will always take priority, so long as it’s eligible to match. Moving forward, broad match and phrase match keywords will follow that same behavior, Google announced on Thursday.

In addition, the company has provided new details on how keyword matching works when a search is identical to a given keyword as well as when a search is not identical to any of an advertiser’s keywords (shown above). Google has also revealed that BERT’s language understanding capabilities are now being used to understand the intent of queries and match them to keywords.

Why we care. The natural language processing capabilities BERT brings to keyword matching may mean that your ads get shown for more relevant searches. Knowing how Google matches keywords can help you save time and better configure your campaigns. However, the removal of search terms not deemed “significant” remains a problem for broad match. Google has added more historical data for queries that received impressions but no clicks, which can be helpful, but advertisers may be missing out on important search query data if broad match terms with less “significant” queries drive more traffic.

Google also recommended that advertisers group keywords into thematically consistent ad groups so their ads will serve from the ad group they expect them to: “Let’s say your business offers food delivery, and your most popular search categories are sushi and pizza delivery. In this case, we’d recommend three ad groups so you can tailor your creative and landing page: one for ‘sushi delivery’, another for ‘pizza delivery’, and a third for ‘food delivery.’”

Read more here.

Microsoft Advertising launches Marketing with Purpose Business attributes

New attributes from Microsoft Advertising allow businesses to indicate their dedication to “responsibility, how your brand values align with the values of your customers, and how your brand is being inclusive,” said an announcement from Vi Nguyen, Crystal Zhang, and MJ DePalma.

The attributes advertisers can choose from fall under four main categories: inclusion, environmental, community/social responsibility, and accessibility. Within those categories, there are 32 attributes that a business can choose. “These attributes can be set at the account level and used to decorate text ads and product ads,” said the announcement.

Why we care. “Recognizing that these values drive value for both your brand and your customers builds trust and inclusivity. Understanding and addressing what your customers value is inclusive marketing. Overall, executing Marketing with Purpose in your advertising is an important way for marketers to overcome barriers in the moments that matter, and to connect with people. It’s an approach that brings us together and highlights great aspects of your business, authentically. It establishes trust, increases brand love, and nurtures loyalty,” Nguyen, Zheng and DePalma said.

Read more here.

Google Search Console performance reports are now back to normal

IMG: https://searchengineland.com/figz/wp-content/seloads/2021/09/gsc-performance-report-delay-1536×458.png

Google Search Console’s performance reports now seem to be back to normal and showing recent data after experiencing significant delays over the past several days. Now, if you look at your performance report, you may see data as recent as four hours ago, which is a normal delay for the performance report.

Why we care. We are sure you are all eager to catch up on your reports and pull down the most recent data. This not only impacted the Search Console website interface, but also any APIs and data connections. So pull in your most recent data and check those positions and click-through rates (and let your clients/stakeholders know the data is back).

Read more here.

Search Shorts: Creative best practices for Google Ads, hot takes on keyword matching, and #SEOChat on strategy

Magic in the making: The 4 pillars of great creative. Google Ads just released its new creative best practices guide. Check it out here.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, I present the least accurate Tweet ever.” That’s Greg Finn’s opinion on Google telling PPCers that “Keyword matching is now more predictable.” If you like that, check out Julie Bacchini’s epic post about the topic.

Crystal Carter, SMX speaker and SEO expert, hosted an #SEOChat yesterday all about SEO strategy. Get the community’s take on how to prioritize and communicate strategy.

What We’re Reading: Snap Scan shines new light on the company’s local discovery ambitions

We tell local businesses all the time that they need to be on social media. Not only is it another citation, but it’s a place for happy customers to leave their positive reviews. Facebook is generally the best place, but Instagram could serve as a search engine too for those small businesses that focus on images to drive traffic and customers (think photographers and restaurants). 

Not one to miss the party, Snap is sneaking into the local market with its new Scan feature — it’s a “visual search tool that makes the world searchable and shoppable,” wrote Mike Boland for StreetFight. This version of artificial reality (AR) “applies machine learning and computer vision magic to identify items you point your phone at.” Then it directs you to the best option for buying that product.

So where does local come in? This new shopping experience comes along with a bunch of other location-focused lens features “like Geofilters, Snap Map, Local Place Promote, and Local Lenses,” said Boland. The AR option means that buyers can potentially find their next fashion option at your store nearby. Is AR and visual search the future of local SEO? Probably not anytime soon, but there’s a chance it could help drive business for retail companies.

The post Data, data, data, data rockin’ everywhere; Friday’s daily brief appeared first on Search Engine Land.