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.
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.
The Shop Module appears below the header and above the tweets section. Image: Twitter.
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.
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, we have a new Google algorithm update to talk about again this week — the link spam update.
If you thought Google was done with all these algorithm updates, you thought wrong. Google launched yet another algorithm update aimed at “nullifying” link spam. So if you or your clients were doing any spammy links and you see a drop in rankings over the next couple of weeks, it might be related to this new algorithm update.
I should note, Google used the word “nullify” for a reason. Nullify does not necessarily mean “penalize,” but instead, to ignore or simply not count. Google’s efforts around link spam have been to ignore and not count spammy links since Penguin 4.0 was released in 2016. But ignoring a signal that may have helped you rank initially might feel like a penalty — keep that in mind.
So far, we are not seeing too many complaints about the link spam update but we will keep you posted.
Barry Schwartz, Link spam reporter
Google passes on 2% “Regulatory Operating Cost” for ads served in India and Italy
Beginning on October 1, 2021, Google will include a 2% “Regulatory Operating Cost” surcharge to advertisers’ invoices for ads served in India and Italy, according to an email sent to Google advertisers on Tuesday. The surcharge applies to ads purchased through Google Ads and for YouTube placements purchased on a reservation basis.
The company was already passing on digital service taxes for ads served in Austria, France, Spain, Turkey and the UK, and this is more of the same. Advertisers should be aware that these fees are charged in addition to their account budgets, so the surcharges won’t be reflected in the cost per conversion metrics in their campaign reporting. Advertisers should take these factors into account when creating their budgets.
And, if you’re thinking, “Hey, regulators are levying these taxes on Google, not on advertisers!” well, you’re not alone. Unfortunately, Google isn’t alone either as Amazon and Apple are also doing something similar by passing on their taxes to third-party sellers and developers in some territories, meaning that passing on government-imposed taxes is quickly becoming a precedent.
Google has begun the two week process of rolling out a new algorithm update; the company is calling it the link spam update. Google said this update targets spammy links “more broadly” and “across multiple languages.” It is a global update that impacts all languages and seems to target links that are manipulative and not natural.
As of Tuesday, I have yet to see many complaints from SEOs about this update. I should add that, over the weekend, I did notice an unconfirmed update that seemed to target more “black hat” methods but again, that was the weekend, and Google said this update started on Monday, so the two are probably unrelated.
In any event, if you see a ranking drop in Google over the next couple of weeks, it might be related to some of your link building methods.
Google seems to have resolved the bug that was preventing review snippets or stars from showing in the search results. We are now able to see the gold stars for many results in the Google Search.
The bug began creeping into the Google Search results interface on Wednesday, July 21st based on the reports that were sent to us. By the following day, the review stars were hard to find for any query you conducted in Google. Google confirmed the issue on Friday, July 23rd. Then, on Monday afternoon (July 26), the issue started to get resolved and now everyone seems to be able to see review stars again.
Why we care. Reviews not showing in the snippets can lead to a lower click through rate from the search results. Lower click through rates can lead to less traffic and less traffic can lead to fewer conversions.
priceRange local business schema. Google has updated the priceRange fields in the Local Business structured data documents to say that the priceRange fields must be less than 100 characters to be eligible for use in Search features.
FAQ content guidelines expandable areas. Google updated the FAQ schema content guidelines document to say the FAQs can be in expandable areas as well as visible on the page to be eligible for use in Google Search features.
Beginning on October 1, 2021, Google will include a 2% “Regulatory Operating Cost” surcharge to advertisers’ invoices for ads served in India and Italy, according to an email sent to Google advertisers on Tuesday. The surcharge applies to ads purchased through Google Ads and for YouTube placements purchased on a reservation basis.
Advertisers should be aware that these fees are charged in addition to their account budgets. As such, the surcharges won’t be reflected in the cost per conversion metrics in their campaign reporting. Advertisers should take these factors into account when creating their budgets.
Additionally, as Greg Finn, partner at digital agency Cypress North, advised on Twitter when Google first announced that it was passing on this surcharge last year, applying the “People in or regularly in your targeted locations” setting can result in racking up more surcharges.
More on the news
Google will add the surcharges to advertisers’ Google Ads costs at the end of each month, to be paid the next time they are charged. The surcharges are subject to any taxes, such as sales tax, VAT, GST or QST that apply in the advertiser’s jurisdiction.
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, do you work for a business that cares about making its content accessible to all?
In our industry, we’re used to speaking of legislation in terms of antitrust or privacy, but for this newsletter intro, I’d like to shift our focus to another piece of landmark legislation: The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) — its 31st anniversary was yesterday. The ADA is directly responsible for the employment of so many people because it requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations, and we’re a more inclusive, stronger society for it.
In addition to brick-and-mortar facilities, ADA protection also extends to websites. Between 2018 and 2019, there were over 2,200 lawsuits filed in federal courts, and although some were aimed at notable brands like Dunkin’ Donuts, Bank of America, Domino’s Pizza and Nike, the majority were directed at SMBs. Today is a fine day to ask yourself and your team, “Are our sites ADA compliant?”
Google publishes timelines for Privacy Sandbox proposals
Google’s Privacy Sandbox timeline. Image: Google
Google recently published a timeline reflecting the stages of development for various categories of Privacy Sandbox initiatives. The timeline provides search marketers with a general idea of when the initiatives should be ready for adoption. That can give marketers some indication as to whether the company will meet its new deadline (late 2023) to deprecate third-party cookies.
Transition period: Stage 1 (in which APIs for each use case are available for adoption) is currently forecasted to begin Q4 2022. Sometime after that, we should have a clearer picture of what advertising with Google looks like as third-party cookies are phased out.
Google fixing two search bugs; review snippets and soft 404 detection
Google has confirmed it is resolving two bugs, one related to review stars showing in the search results and another related to how Google processes soft 404 documents. The two issues seem to be unrelated.
Over the past couple of days, Google Search has, for the most part, stopped showing review snippets — the image above shows the same results screenshotted two days apart. And, Google recently changed how it detects soft 404 pages, which caused some to see spikes in soft 404 errors but not clearly seeing if those pages were in the Google index or not. Both of these issues can directly affect your traffic from Google Search, so when the company does fix them, it may lead to more traffic.
New business openings remained strong in Q2 across categories, according to Yelp
New business openings over time. Image: Yelp.
In Q2, new local businesses opened in record numbers and across numerous sectors, according to Yelp. In categories like home, local, professional and automotive services, new business openings were higher than they’ve been since 2017-2018. Business owners may feel more confident thanks to widespread vaccine rollout and pent-up consumer demand — a phenomenon I’ve seen referred to as “rage spending.”
The economy is rebuilding its momentum and people are rethinking their lifestyles in the wake of the pandemic. We’ve seen massive shifts in the labor force, with many workers using their newly found leverage to find better, higher-paying jobs. While I’d like to say that “the pandemic is gone for good,” my guidance in today’s introduction still applies: never say “never.”
It’s news to me. I just learned that at one point, Sergey Brin and Larry Page called their search engine “BackRub,” because it analyzed backlinks. Just imagine: BackRub Maps, BackRub+, BRMail, BackRub Shopping… So, what’s got a better ring to it? Vote here.
Google Maps updates “dangerous” Ben Nevis route. “Mountaineering groups said the dotted line crossed ‘potentially fatal’ steep, rocky and pathless terrain, while a suggested walking route for a different mountain, An Teallach, would lead people over a cliff,” the BBC reported. I’ve followed Google Maps directions on trails before and it hasn’t always turned out great — I’m glad this is now on the company’s radar, but I wonder if they’ll be able to resolve this issue at scale.
The EU gives Google two months to improve hotel and flight search result transparency
Yesterday, the European Commission told Google that it has two months to improve how it presents flight and hotel search results and explain how it ranks them. If it doesn’t meet the deadline, the company may face sanctions.
“The latest grievance centres on the prices on its services Google Flights and Google Hotels,” Foo Yun Chee wrote for Reuters, “The final prices for these should include fees or taxes that can be calculated in advance, while reference prices used to calculate promoted discounts should be clearly identifiable, the EU executive and national consumer watchdogs, led by the Dutch agency and the Belgian Directorate General for Economic Inspection, said in a joint statement.”
In the U.S., Google is already showing why it ranked a specific search result, so I imagine this won’t be a huge leap for the company to achieve. However, some of the EU’s regulatory tactics seem to have an end goal (like more transparency or increasing competition), but also leave a lot of wiggle room, which companies are sure to take advantage of — for example, the auction that initially powered the search choice screen, which Google ultimately had to drop due to pressure from regulators and competitors. If vague instructions are given, don’t be surprised when the result isn’t exactly what you were hoping for.
Google seems to have resolved the bug it has with showing review snippets or stars in the search results. We are now able to see the gold yellow stars for many search results in the Google Search results.
Timeline. The bug began creeping into the Google Search results interface on Wednesday, July 21st based on the reports that were sent to us. By the following day, Thursday, July 22nd, the review starts were hard to find for any query you conducted in Google. Google confirmed the issue on Friday, July 23rd. Then yesterday afternoon, Monday, July 26th, the issue started to get resolved where now everyone seems to be able to see review stars in the Google Search results.
Reporting issues. Google also wrote on the data anomalies page that between July 19th and 23rd in the Google Search Console Performance reports for Google Search, “Due to an internal issue, you may see a drop in your Review snippet and Product rich results performance during this period. We regret any problems this may have caused on your site.” So make sure to annotate your own internal reports about this issue.
Why we care. Google was not showing review stars in the search results and that can lead to a lower click through rate from the search results. Lower click through rates can lead to less traffic and less traffic can lead to less conversions. But at the same time, your competitors likely did not show the review stars, so everyone was in the same boat.
Google is rolling out the link spam update today and throughout the next two weeks. This link spam update targets spammy links “more broadly” and “across multiple languages,” Duy Nguyen, a Google search quality analyst, said.
The announcement. Google wrote “in our continued efforts to improve the quality of the search results, we’re launching a new link spam fighting change today — which we call the “link spam update.” This algorithm update, which will rollout across the next two weeks, is even more effective at identifying and nullifying link spam more broadly, across multiple languages. Sites taking part in link spam will see changes in Search as those links are re-assessed by our algorithms.”
Nullifying link spam. You can see the word Google used here was “nullifying,” which does not necessarily mean “penalize,” but instead, to ignore or simply not count. Google’s efforts around link spam have been to ignore and not count spammy links since Penguin 4.0 was released in 2016.
Might feel like a penalty. While Google may not penalize your site for these spammy links, if Google ignores or nullifies links that may have been helping a site rank well in Google Search, that might feel like a penalty. In short, if you see your rankings drop over the next two weeks and if it is a sharper drop, it might be related to this update.
Best practices on links. Google’s Duy Nguyen published a blog post about link spam and best practices that you can read here.
Why we care. Again, if you see ranking declines in Google over the next two weeks, it might be related to this new link spam update. Make sure your links are natural and in accordance with Google’s webmaster guidelines. Work on improving your site, so it can naturally attract new links over time.
As Google wrote, “Site owners should make sure that they are following the best practices on links, both incoming and outgoing. Focusing on producing high quality content and improving user experience always wins out compared to manipulating links. Promote awareness of your site using appropriately tagged links, and monetize it with properly tagged affiliate links.”
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 I’m moving this week.
I read somewhere once that moving is one of the top three most stressful life events, and I believe it. Everything is chaotic, and I don’t know where anything is. I thought having movers would make it a lot easier, but it’s actually made it harder for me, personally. There’s an element of releasing control that I don’t quite have a handle on. I don’t have control over my control issue.
Barry kindly reminded me that this is exactly what a site migration can feel like for SEOs too. Sometimes it’s out of your hands, with developers doing the work, and you just orchestrating. When you’re in the middle of it, even the best-planned migrations can feel chaotic and like you don’t know where anything is or goes.
But the idea is that, with months of planning and structuring, when you get to the other side, things will be simple and work as you intended. If you’re navigating a site move, I hope you feel more settled than I do with my house move, right now. Either way, we’ll get to the other side.
Carolyn Lyden, Director of Search Content
Google’s three-strikes ad policy isn’t the problem, it’s policy application that worries advertisers
Google Ads’ new three-strikes program, which begins in September 2021, applies to violations of its Enabling Dishonest Behavior, Unapproved Substances and Dangerous Products or Services policies. If an advertiser is found to be in violation of Google’s policies, they’ll receive a warning for the first infraction. After that, penalties become increasingly strict with each violation, leading up to account suspension after the third strike.
The PPC professionals that spoke to us for this article were largely in favor of the three-strikes system. However, Google’s enforcement, which can be haphazard, has them concerned. “I’ve had ‘false flags’ come up specifically in these categories a handful of times over the past year (including display ads for a cybersecurity company being disapproved for promoting drug use!),” said Tim Jensen, campaign manager at Clix Marketing.
Communicating the change with stakeholders and clients ahead of time can help you frame their expectations once the new policies come into effect. Eventually, more advertisers may potentially run afoul of the system, so it’s best to get ahead of it now instead of allowing that first warning or strike to be issued.
Bing accounts for 26.5% of all desktop searches in the U.S., according to Comscore (April 2021). With the recent prevalence of working from home, people are spending more time on their desktop computers, which might also mean that more people are now using Bing.
Bing’s ranking algorithm is dynamic. “The ranking algorithm is a gigantic machine learning model and it’s evolving constantly,” said Frédéric Dubut, principal project PM manager, core search & AI at Microsoft.
This potentially means that, if everyone starts prioritizing one ranking criteria, then that signal may become less indicative of relevance and Bing’s algorithm may assign less weight to it. Instead of cherry-picking ranking factors to optimize for, we recommend that you cover all the bases to the best of your ability while keeping in mind how Bing treats the following elements of search.
Search Shorts: Click maps, CRO and new tools for media planners
Collect user data with click maps. You have probably heard that to be successful you need to be data-driven, only if it was that simple. Collecting data is the easy part; figuring out what matters and how to use this information to your advantage is a lot more difficult. Here to save the day are click maps – a simple yet powerful heatmap tool that makes it easy for you to collect, visualize and understand your website’s analytics data.
How to build user trust with CRO & UX tweaks. A user’s trust of your site isn’t always the most pressing issue a site can have, from an SEO perspective. Often, you’re too busy putting out technical fires or building a brand from scratch, one backlink at a time. But when the technical foundations are there, your content marketing/PR is on point, and yet the graphs start to plateau; this can be a great time to take stock of a site and really dig into whether it’s as strong as it can be from a trust perspective.
Plan for business growth with Display & Video 360. To help media planners adjust to this new way of working, Google Ads is introducing two Display & Video 360 tools that will help you estimate the reach of your campaigns in real-time across any inventory type – including traditional TV, connected TV (CTV) and even audio.
What We’re Reading: Using keywords in YouTube videos: How to get more views
Video has been the “next big thing” for a while. Over 75% of GenZers age 15-25 watch YouTube. “Their most used platform is YouTube closely followed by Instagram – so video is clearly a priority for them,” wrote Sorilbran Stone. So it only makes sense that more search marketers are using Google’s video platform for both paid and organic reach.
This guide demonstrates how YouTube’s algorithm works and how you can optimize your video content to show up in those results. The key is to plan for your audience and work backward from there. Important metrics include things like watch time, retention rate, and engagement, but your keywords are also critical.
YouTube assesses keywords not just from titles, tags, and descriptions, but also from the audio of the video — which means it’s critical to actually say them in your audio script and transcription. How do you choose the keywords? Well, good, old-fashioned keyword research, of course.
Join this hour-long event curated for marketers on July 29 at 12 p.m. ET. Learn how to simplify the personalization process and use resources more efficiently and effectively from special guest Randy Warner of Forrester and also experts from Sleep Number and Dow Jones.
Attend for:
Insights from Forrester’s latest personalization research to act upon immediately
Tips for better marketing based on real-life success stories
Industry trends that show where and how you can optimize for your organization’s growth
Register today for an insight-packed event that promises to inspire your personalization journey.
On Friday, Google published a timeline reflecting the stages of development for various categories of Privacy Sandbox initiatives.
Caption: The Privacy Sandbox timeline, as of July 23, 2021.
The timeline (shown above) divides initiatives into four categories (“fight spam and fraud on the web,” “show relevant content and ads,” “measure digital ads,” and “strengthen cross-site privacy boundaries”). The phases indicated on the timeline are as follows:
Discussion – The technologies and their prototypes are discussed in forums such as GitHub or W3C groups.
Testing – All technologies for the use case are available for developers to test and may be refined based on results.
Ready for adoption – Once the development process is complete, the successful technologies are ready to be used at scale. They will be launched in Chrome and ready for scaled use across the web.
Transition period: Stage 1 – APIs for each use case are available for adoption. Chrome will monitor adoption and feedback carefully before moving to next stage.
Transition period: Stage 2 – Chrome will phase out support for third-party cookies over a three-month period finishing in late 2023.
Why we care
This timeline provides search marketers with a general idea of when various Privacy Sandbox initiatives should be ready for adoption. That can give marketers some indication as to whether the company will meet its new deadline (late 2023) to deprecate third-party cookies.
Transition period: Stage 1 (in which APIs for each use case are available for adoption) is currently forecasted to begin Q4 2022. Sometime after that, we should have a clearer picture of what advertising with Google looks like as third-party cookies are phased out.
More on the news
APIs shown on the timeline are based on Google’s current expectations and are subject to change. The timeline will be updated monthly.
Google expects Stage 1 of the transition period to last nine months. At some point during Stage 1, the company will announce a new timeline that decreases third-party cookies’ “Time to Live.”
The transition period will begin once APIs for all of the use cases are ready for scaled adoption. Chrome will announce the start of the transition on the timeline page and on the Keyword blog.
