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Good morning, Marketers, who should foot the bill?

More accurately, who should pay for digital service taxes (DST)? Earlier this week, Google announced that it would be passing on a 2% “regulatory operating cost” surcharge to advertisers’ invoices for ads served in India and Italy — the company is already doing this for ads served in Austria, Turkey, the UK, France and Spain.

These fees are imposed by regulators on companies that sell ads (e.g., Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc). “Typically, these kinds of cost increases are borne by customers and like other companies affected by this tax, we will be adding a fee to our invoices, from November,” a Google spokesperson told the UK’s City A.M back in September.

It’s true. One way or another, taxes imposed on companies usually end up getting paid by customers. If the motivation behind these taxes is simply to bring in more tax revenue, then it probably doesn’t matter to regulators whether a platform or its customers are paying. But, the thresholds for these taxes seem to suggest that large businesses are the target.

Take, for example, the UK’s DST thresholds: a company must make more than £500 million in global digital services revenues and £25 million in UK digital services revenues within a 12-month period to be subject to the tax.

While encouraging competition may not be a primary driving force behind these DSTs, it’s hard to imagine that it’s not a related subject, given the criteria above. Either way, taxes increase the overall price of a good or service, which affects how much of it we can buy, and that could have real implications for businesses that rely on advertising to generate revenue.

I’m still doing my research on this topic, and I’d love to hear your opinion. Send your thoughts to gnguyen@thirddoormedia.com (subject line: My two cents on that 2%).

George Nguyen,
Editor

Analyzing the top 10 YouTube results

Semrush recently conducted a YouTube SEO study based on 15,000 keywords that triggered a featured video in the SERP. Then, it took a look at the top 10 YouTube results for each of those keywords. The findings seem to be in line with many of the YouTube best practices that I’ve seen. The study found that:

• 45% of videos were between three to five minutes, and 5% were shorter than one minute.
• 52% of videos ranking for “how-to” keywords are longer than five minutes. For the general sample, it was only 33%.
• More than half of the videos that ranked in the first position have more than 50 words in the description.
• Only 8% of videos with timestamps rank in position one — so while they may be important for UX, they’re not crucial to ranking highly.
• Title similarity with keyword ratio, number of views, and video duration were the most important parameters, according to the machine learning model Semrush used.
• 18% of videos were from channels that have less than 1,000 subscribers, so even smaller channels can find themselves among the top 10.

How-to content has been a topic of interest as of late, and the study zooms in specifically on those videos as well. You can read the entire study over at the Semrush blog.

Google’s local ads tips for the back-to-school shopping season

More than half of North American back-to-school shoppers say they’ll check for in-store inventory online before going into a store and 48% will shop at stores that offer curbside pickup or contactless shipping, according to Ipsos data commissioned by Google. To help retailers take advantage of these consumer preferences, Google has published a list of local ads solutions.

• Get your local inventory online: Businesses that don’t yet have a local inventory feed can use Pointy from Google, a hardware device that attaches to a point-of-sale barcode scanner to pull its title, image and description to add it to Surfaces across Google. Pointy is free for eligible retailers until September 30.
• Local inventory ads: These ads enable brick-and-mortar stores to showcase their inventory online. They can also indicate immediate curbside pickup or pickup later options.
• Local campaigns: This campaign type can be used to promote your locations. Local campaigns measure and optimize specifically for store visits and local actions (calls and clicks to driving directions), and appear across Google Maps, Search, YouTube, Gmail and the Google Display Network.

Read more here.

Start the week off with some food for thought regarding “the algorithm”

“The algorithm” isn’t a singular thing. Understanding that many algorithms may be working together to power a platform is crucial to optimizing for that platform. Lea Kissner, head of privacy engineering at Twitter, has a great thread on this topic.

Google recommends one primary video per page. If you’re applying video structured data, Google’s John Mueller recommends doing it to just one main video per page.

“Pretty much.” This one’s for those who love doge and SEO memes. Tip of the hat to Izzi Smith.

From carrot to stick: The dam has broken on COVID vaccine mandates

“It took mandates to eradicate smallpox and eliminate polio,” Nicole Wetsman wrote for The Verge, “We control measles, diphtheria, and other infectious diseases by requiring kids get their shots before going to school. When vaccines aren’t required, uptake tends to stay low — it’s one reason rates of HPV vaccination aren’t as high as health experts would like, even though the shots can prevent cancer.”

Much of the marketing data that’s been published for Q1 and Q2 2021 show increased consumer demand (compared to last year) across verticals — we’ve even published a few of those figures in this newsletter. These positive signs were made possible by the COVID vaccine, but the future isn’t looking so promising now that new cases have spiked, giving way to the “fourth wave.”

As a society, we’ve stalled out on administering the vaccine. Incentive programs, ranging from free beer to baseball tickets and now, possibly even a $100 payment to newly vaccinated Americans, have only succeeded in nudging people who were on the fence. It seems that businesses and governing bodies are recognizing that mandates may be necessary to curb the threat of the Delta variant.

Last week, the Department of Veterans Affairs, which runs one of the country’s biggest health systems, became the first federal agency to introduce a mandate. Then, President Biden announced that all federal employees would have to get vaccinated or undergo regular COVID testing and other protocols. The private sector is moving in the same direction: Google, Facebook and Lyft have announced that only vaccinated employees may return to the office.

People need to stay employed to continue providing for their families and businesses need to stay operational to pay their staff. Nobody wants to give their employees ultimatums, but every government entity and business that does so sets a precedent, making it easier for smaller organizations to follow suit. “Mandates won’t fix [the COVID] problem on their own, but they’re one more strategy that could help,” Wetsman wrote, “At this point, we need all the help we can get.”

The post Google’s back-to-school shopping tips for local merchants; Monday’s daily brief appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Google has added several new technical and content quality guidelines to the math solver structured data help documentation over the weekend. The new guidelines list a number of requirements in order to be able to show math solver and practice problem rich results in Google Search.

Technical guidelines. The new technical guidelines call for your site to have the structured data, that your server can handle Googlebot crawling your site, how you deal with duplicate math solver elements and ensuring the content is visible and not behind a paywall.

Here are those guidelines:

• Add MathSolver structured data to the home page of your site.
• Ensure that your host load settings allow for frequent crawls.
• If you have several identical copies of the same math solver hosted under different URLs, use the canonical URLs on each copy of the page.
• Google doesn’t allow math solvers that are entirely hidden behind a login or paywall. Once users navigate from the feature on Google to your site, the solution and a step-by-step walkthrough for their initial problem must be accessible to them. Additional content can be behind a login or paywall.

Content guidelines. The new content guidelines aim to ensure that the content in your math solver problems are not promotional and also provide accurate and quality-based answers. Here are those new guidelines:

• We don’t allow promotional content disguised as a math solver, such as those posted by a third party (for example, affiliate programs).
• You are responsible for the accuracy and quality of your math solver through this feature. If a certain amount of your data is found to be inaccurate based on our quality review processes, then your solver may be removed from the feature until you resolve the issues depending on the severity. This applies to:
  • The accuracy of the problem types your solver is capable of solving.
  • The accuracy of your solutions for math problems your solver declares it can solve.

What practice problems look like. Google explained it as an “interactive feature that tests your knowledge of high school math, chemistry and physics topics directly on Search.” Here is a GIF of it in action:

Google added the structured data help documents back in March of this year. The company added these new guidelines late last week.

Another change made to the help document is that Google removed solution page markup instructions and said that it is fine to remove any existing solution page markup.

Why we care. If you are in the online education content business, you may want to leverage these new structured data types to get more exposure in the Google Search results. These may help increase your click-through rates on some of your snippets in the search results and it may help you gain more traffic to your site. It may also lead to fewer clicks, if the answer is solved directly on Google’s site but you should be able to track that within Search Console if they add this data to the performance report.

If you want to show up for math solver rich results, make sure you are in accordance with both the technical and content guidelines.

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Now that COVID vaccines are available to everyone 12 years of age and older, children may be more likely to return to school this fall, which means many retailers are preparing for back-to-school shopping. To highlight a few options that can help retailers optimize for both in-store and online back-to-school shoppers, Google has published a list of local ads solutions.

Get your local inventory online. Businesses that don’t yet have a local inventory feed can use Pointy from Google, a hardware device that attaches to a point-of-sale barcode scanner to pull its title, image and description to add it to Surfaces across Google. For eligible retailers in the U.S., Canada, UK and Ireland, Pointy is free until September 30.

Local inventory ads. Retailers can bring their brick-and-mortar store online with local inventory ads. Local inventory ads also enable stores to indicate whether products are available for immediate curbside pickup or pickup later.

Local promotions, which are available in beta to merchants participating in local inventory ads and promotions in Australia, France, Germany, the UK, Canada and the U.S., can also be used to show store-specific offers.

Promote your locations. According to Ipsos data commissioned by Google, 60% of back-to-school shoppers plan to do at least a portion of their shopping at a small business this year. Local campaigns, which measure and optimize specifically for store visits and local actions (calls and clicks to driving directions), can help businesses take advantage of this by enabling them to promote their locations across Google Maps, Search, YouTube, Gmail and the Google Display Network.

Optimize for online and in-store. Advertisers can include store visits in Smart Bidding to help them grow sales both in-store and online. 

Why we care. More than half of North American back-to-school shoppers say they’ll check for in-store inventory online before going into a store and 48% will shop at stores that offer curbside pickup or contactless shipping, according to Ipsos data commissioned by Google. Promoting your in-store inventory, pickup options and locations can help retailers make the most of these consumer preferences and potentially sell more products.

If you’re looking for ways to increase your shop’s visibility for free across Google, check out our resource “FAQ: All about Google Shopping and Surfaces across Google.”

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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, in one of our featured stories below, I covered how Google decides to rank different vertical search elements, such as the image carousel or news box, in the search results.

Gary Illyes explained about the process but also said that Google determines when to show images or videos or top stories boxes in the search results based on what it learns from searchers’ actions. So, if a lot of people click on image results from the main search results page, it is a sign that Google may want to show an image carousel box on that page.

This click data is not used for individual search results (i.e., to rank page A over page B or to rank image X over image Y). Google is using the click data to see if people are going from the web results, to the image or video results and if they do that a lot, Google may decide to show an image or video carousel box in the search results. Got the difference? 

Barry Schwartz,
Click analysis consultant

How Google ranks features like news, videos, features snippets

Gary Illyes from Google explained in a recent podcast how Google Search ranks its vertical search results, i.e., news, images, videos, etc, within the core search results. Why does Google show an image carousel for a specific query in the fourth position and why does Google show videos for another query in the top position? 

Google uses a number of methods for this but Gary Illyes explained that each index or feature bids, like you would in an auction, for each position. So a video carousel can bid based on the weights Google assigned it, to be in position three or position four and Google’s overall universal search system will figure out where to place it. Google also decides when to show a feature based on click data, which is super fascinating as well. This gets a bit technical, so we recommend you read more.

Read more here.

Display & Video 360 gets new frequency and reach metrics

Google is adding a dedicated data visualization in Display & Video 360 (DV360) to show reach gains for each campaign that spans across channels and has a frequency goal set at the campaign level, the company announced Thursday. In addition, DV360 will also calculate the added reach advertisers get for each Programmatic Guaranteed deal using DV360’s frequency management solution.

Why we care. Having access to real-time reach gains can help advertisers gauge their campaign performance and manage their programmatic campaigns across channels. This new data visualization may also enable advertisers to save time that might otherwise be spent experimenting to test the impact of their frequency management strategies across various media types. And, the added reach data for Programmatic Guaranteed deals can help advertisers understand how those deals add to the incremental reach they get for their frequency management efforts. 

Read more here.

Google no longer allows multiple instances of fact check markup per page

Google has updated its technical guidelines for Fact Check structured data, saying that a page must only have one ClaimReview element and that multiple fact checks per page is no longer allowed.

The revised guidelines now say “to be eligible for the single fact check rich result, a page must only have one ClaimReview element. If you add multiple ClaimReview elements per page, the page won’t be eligible for the single fact check rich result.” Previously, the guidelines said “a single page can host multiple ClaimReview elements, each for a separate claim.” But that is no longer the case, now you can only have one ClaimReview element per page, not more, to be eligible to show fact check rich results in Google Search.

Why we care. If your site does show fact check rich results in search and you are using multiple ClaimReview elements on a single page, you may want to remove all ClaimReview elements but one. Google’s guidelines now only allow one per page and thus your rich results for Fact Check may stop showing if you are marking up more than one per page.

Quality threshold, nofollow vs sponsored and Google Ads script beta

Google quality threshold. Gary Illyes of Google explains that if you are on the edge of Google’s quality threshold, you can see your pages pop in and out of the index and search results. You’ll probably want to improve your quality if you see that.

Nofollow vs rel sponsored. When Google announced the new link spam update this week, there was been a lot of confusion around using rel=nofollow vs rel=sponsored. You do not, I repeat, do not, need to switch your nofollows to rel=sponsored according to Google.

Localized site signals. If you have an English site and then a localized French language site, Google generally will give the French site its own signals, apart from the English site, said Gary Illyes.

Google Ads scripts beta experience. Google Ads launched a beta version of the new Google Ads scripts experience. To see it, open your script and switch on the new scripts experience (Beta) toggle above the code. More details over here.

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

• Advances in TF-Ranking – Google AI Blog
• Author Scores for Recommendations at Google – Go Fish Digital
• Daily SEO Fix: Auditing for Technical SEO Problems with Moz Pro – Moz
• Quiet Week After The Google Link Spam Update But Maybe A Blip Happening Now – Search Engine Roundtable
• Update to Advertiser Identity Verification Policy (July 2021) – Google Advertising Policies Help

The post Did Google admit it uses click data for search? Not really.; Friday’s daily brief appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Google is adding a dedicated data visualization in Display & Video 360 (DV360) to show reach gains for each campaign that spans across channels and has a frequency goal set at the campaign level, the company announced Thursday. In addition, DV360 will also calculate the added reach advertisers get for each Programmatic Guaranteed deal using DV360’s frequency management solution.

Why we care

Having access to real-time reach gains can help advertisers gauge their campaign performance and manage their programmatic campaigns across channels. This new data visualization may also enable advertisers to save time that might otherwise be spent experimenting to test the impact of their frequency management strategies across various media types.

And, the added reach data for Programmatic Guaranteed deals can help advertisers understand how those deals add to the incremental reach they get for their frequency management efforts. 

More on the announcement

• DV360 uses log data to compare the reach obtained by a cross-channel campaign against the reach that an advertiser would have obtained with separate campaigns, each with a single channel and its own frequency goal.
• The information in the data visualization can also be accessed at the advertiser or partner level by creating an offline report in the standard DV360 reporting.

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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, I need your help.

I’m hoping you’ll take three minutes to complete our Event Participation Index survey.

The team here at Third Door Media has been hard at work programming our third virtual learning journey of the year, SMX Convert, which will be on August 17. We’re also looking ahead to next year’s line-up of events and we need to know how you feel about in-person and virtual events. We publish the results so that all marketers who are wrestling with these decisions can have some data to work with. Please make your opinions heard by filling out our quick survey.

Keep on scrolling for the latest news. And for those who, like me, sometimes struggle with navigating the challenges that arrived with the pandemic and our transition away from it *knock on wood*, I’ve written a special section at the end of this newsletter that highlights the importance of mental health and provides a few tips that can help you take back some control over your life — hang in there, you’re tougher than this.

George Nguyen,
Editor

Instagram is disabling interest and activity-based targeting of underage users

Beginning in a few weeks, advertisers will only be able to target Instagram, Facebook and Messenger users under the age of 18 (or older in certain territories) based on their age, gender and location, Instagram announced Tuesday. As such, previously available targeting options, such as those based on interests or activity on other sites or apps, will become unavailable to advertisers. This policy change will roll out worldwide.

Why we care. If you’re managing Instagram, Facebook or Messenger ad campaigns that target minors based on their interests and activities across the web, then you’ll need to find an alternative way to reach them as you’ll be losing access to those targeting options in the coming weeks.

Read more here.

85% of users who did holiday research on Reddit made a purchase based on their research

We’re approaching the midpoint of summer, but for e-commerce marketers that means it’s time to look ahead to the upcoming holiday shopping season. Often overlooked in traditional campaigns, Reddit can be a tremendous resource for shoppers researching what to buy and 85% of users who did holiday research on the platform made a purchase based on what they found, according to the company’s recently launched holiday guide.

October is an opportune time to get in front of users exploring their potential purchases as the platform sees a 2.7x increase in daily shopping and gifting conversations during this month. Advertisers may also be able to take advantage of auction efficiency in October as well, since it’s just before the peak of shopping season. Additionally, 34% of Reddit users shop in-stores for last-minute gifts between December 1 and Christmas day, making it a good time to drive awareness for in-store sales.

Twitter’s Shop Module pilot adds a product carousel to profiles

Twitter has launched Shop Modules, a dedicated section at the top of profiles where brands can showcase their products, as a pilot, the company announced Wednesday. The Shop Module pilot is currently rolling out with a handful of brands in the U.S., and only people in the U.S. who use Twitter in English on iOS devices are currently able to see the module.

Why we care. If this feature receives a wider rollout, Shop Modules may help bridge the gap between audiences discussing a brand and discovering that brand’s products on Twitter. Additionally, the user bases of social media platforms vary by factors like age, gender and education level. This new feature may be especially useful for B2C or D2C brands whose target audiences are particularly active on Twitter.

Read more here.

Service areas in local business listings, Olympic athletes in AR and the marketing data diet

Google local business listings in Search displays service areas. It would appear as though Google is testing a new label for displaying local business service areas. When you click on a region in the “Areas served” section, all the areas the business supports are overlaid. A tip of the hat to Ben Fisher who first brought this to our attention.

Are marketers welcomed guests or party crashers? This week’s Marketoon takes us through the various stages of data intrusion at the hands of unsavvy data management.

Olympic athletes in 3D & AR in Google Search. Olympics fans can see some of the more well-known athletes in 3D via Google’s augmented reality technology. Check it out by going to Google.com on mobile or in the Google app and scrolling down to the “Athletes in 3D” section.

By now, burnout is a given…but it doesn’t have to be

“Thank goodness 2020 is behind us, the vaccine is here and I can pick up my life where I left off!” — that was my immediate reaction after my second vaccine dose. To my unfortunate surprise, shadows of that traumatic period continue to peak around the edges of my life. It seems I’m not the only one: four in ten U.S. adults have reported symptoms of anxiety or depressive disorder; that’s four times the rate reported from January to June 2019, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

“To muster the energy for reentry into non-pandemic life, people need more than a vaccine and a vacation; they need validation of their experience, a broader reckoning with how they lived before March 2020, and tools to dig out from more than a year of trauma,” Lucy McBride wrote for The Atlantic, in which she cites hustle culture, toxic stress and poor access to affordable healthcare as factors that conspired to make Americans among the least healthy populations in wealthy countries — and that’s before we even had a pandemic.

Many of us are already resuming parts of our pre-pandemic lifestyles, but that can also introduce new stressors, like returning to the office. To help cope, McBride offered the following advice: 

• Accept that there will be anxiety and that the accumulated stress may have physical manifestations. “Normalizing these attitudes can help remove the shame and self-stigma of feeling unwell,” she said.
• Being at the mercy of the pandemic can make you feel like you don’t have agency over your own life, so it may be necessary to take back control where you can. “Reassessing and simplifying our home life, work, and relationships can be a good place to start,” she recommended, “With limited space in our schedules and brains, we must populate our calendars with intention.”
• And, advocate for the recognition of burnout within your own company and community. This makes it easier for people to show compassion, which can also do wonders to reduce stress and anxiety.

Adopting these pointers has helped me rebound from quite a few bad days — even yesterday, as a matter of fact. “Evidence also shows that people who experience trauma and adverse childhood events, particularly those that are sustained, are at significantly higher risk for developing subsequent medical problems such as obesity, diabetes, and heart disease,” McBride wrote, so taking care of your mental wellbeing may also carry positive benefits for your long term physical health as well.

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Google has updated its technical guidelines for Fact Check structured data saying that a page must only have one ClaimReview element and that multiple fact checks per page is no longer allowed.

The revised guidelines. The revised guidelines now say “to be eligible for the single fact check rich result, a page must only have one ClaimReview element. If you add multiple ClaimReview elements per page, the page won’t be eligible for the single fact check rich result.”

Previously the guidelines said “a single page can host multiple ClaimReview elements, each for a separate claim.” But that is no longer the case, now you can only have one ClaimReview element per page, not more, to be eligible to show fact check rich result in Google Search.

Before screenshot. Here is a screenshot of the guidelines before this change was made:

After screenshot. Here is what the page looks like now:

Why we care. If your site does show fact check rich results in search and you are using multiple ClaimReview elements on a single page, you may want to remove all ClaimReview elements but one. Google’s guidelines now only allow one per page and thus your rich results for Fact Check may stop showing if you are showing more than one per page.

Make sure to review the guidelines for Fact Check rich results over here.

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Paid search is an efficient and cost-effective way to drive more high-intent customers to your business. If you get it right, you can drive high-value inbound calls. And once you get a potential customer to call, they convert at 10x the rate than they do online, so you might be sitting on a gold mine. But driving inbound calls with PPC is a bit different than clicks, and attribution and optimization can be tricky.

In this webinar, the paid search geniuses from Media Experts and conversation intelligence pros at Invoca will show you how to implement and execute these killer paid search tactics that will turn more high-intent searchers into inbound calls that accelerate your customer acquisition.

Register today for “Killer Paid Search Tactics That Every Marketer Needs to Know,“ presented by Invoca.

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Twitter has launched Shop Modules, a dedicated section at the top of profiles where brands can showcase their products, as a pilot, the company announced Wednesday. The Shop Module pilot is currently rolling out with a handful of brands in the U.S., and only people in the U.S. who use Twitter in English on iOS devices are currently able to see the module.

Why we care

Twitter hopes that Shop Modules will be “a feature that allows us to explore how shoppable profiles can create a pathway from talking about and discovering products on Twitter to actually purchasing them.” If the pilot is successful, Shop Modules may become widely available, providing brands with a new way to help audiences discover their products.

The user bases of social media platforms vary by factors like age, gender and education level. This new feature may be especially useful for B2C or D2C brands whose target audiences are particularly active on Twitter.   

More on the announcement

• The Shop Module is a carousel of products. Tapping on a product takes the user to the associated product detail page (in an in-app browser, so they aren’t leaving Twitter), where they can learn more and/or complete the purchase.
• The Shop Module pilot is currently not open for businesses to sign-up.
• “We’re creating deeper partnerships with businesses that reflect whom we’re building for with a new Merchant Advisory Board,” the company said in its announcement. The board will consist of “best-in-class examples of merchants on Twitter” and the company hopes to utilize this advisory board to address the needs of businesses of various sizes and across verticals in its own product innovation.

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