Google has added nine new policies to its three-strikes system that punishes advertisers who don’t follow the rules.

The three-strikes system was announced in July. Testing then began in September.

When the program was announced, Google said they planned to include more policy types to avoid. Now they have announced nine additional policies. 

When this change takes effect. It starts June 21. Google said it will then gradually ramp up over a three-month period. 

The nine new policies. Running advertisements on any of the following could earn your account a strike:

• Compensated sexual acts
• Mail-order brides
• Clickbait
• Misleading ad design
• Bail bond services
• Call Directories, forwarding services
• Credit repair services
• Binary options
• Personal loans

What else to avoid. Google Ads has three main buckets for ads that earn violations, none of which are new. If you need a refresher, you can find them all here: 

• Enabling dishonest behavior
• Healthcare and medicines
• Dangerous products or services

Strikes and punishments. If your account receives a warning or strike, you will be notified via email and in your account. As a reminder, here’s what happens if your ads get flagged. 

Warning

• Trigger: First time an ad violates one of Google’s policies. 
• Penalty: Ad is removed.

First Strike

• Trigger: Violating the same policy, for which you received a warning, within 90 days.
• Penalty: Account is placed on a three-day hold and no ads are eligible to run.

Second strike

• Trigger: Violating the same policy, for which you received a first strike, within 90 days.
• Penalty: Account is placed on a seven-day hold and no ads are eligible to run. 

If you have received a first or second strike, but don’t violate Google Ads policies for 90 days, the strikes will expire.

Third strike

• Trigger: Violating the same policy, for which you received a second strike, within 90 days.
• Penalty: Account suspension.

Why we care. Anytime Google updates its Ads policy, it’s important to know what’s changing. Knowing what the Google Ads policies should help keep your account safe and avoid earning any warnings, strikes or an account suspension.

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With more people working from home, the lines between work and personal time are more blurred than ever. As such, a new report by Forrester, done on behalf of Microsoft, says there is a new persona that brands and marketers need to be aware of: the “workday consumer.”

What is a workday consumer? They are online more often than before the pandemic. They switch between work and personal to-do lists throughout the day. And they use work devices, tools and software for personal purposes. 

Why we care. Consumer habits and preferences have shifted. Brands already recognize this and are planning to invest more in search and other types of advertising, according to the report. Search continues to be an important touchpoint during multiple phases of the buying journey – from initial research, to produce exploration, to purchase (and everything in between).

Key search stats. 

• 75%: The number of respondents who said search has become more important to their brand’s online advertising strategies.
• 70%: The amount of budget going to digital channels within the next 12 months, including search, social, online video and display advertising. (Before the pandemic, 58% of paid media went to digital).
• 60%: The percentage of companies planning to increase advertising budget for search, online video and display advertising in the next 12 months.
• 16%: The percentage of brand respondents who said their brand plans to increase its paid search advertising budget by more than 10% over the next 12 months.
• 88%: The percentage of respondents who said their brand plans to advertise on three or more search engines over the next 12 months. Currently, 92% of brand respondents said their company advertises on two or more search engines.

Key recommendation for search marketers. Workday consumers research products and services in between work tasks. So if you want to attract, convert and retain these people, make sure your messaging, content and ads go beyond simple demographics and past behavior.

What Forrester recommends. “Brands must consider more nuanced cues such as working mode (e.g., desk-based or frontline, office-based or remote), mindset, activity, and emotion to understand and target workday consumers.” Also:

• “Use existing demographic and digital-behavior analytics to deduce these cues and employ methods such as self-reported studies, observational studies, location tracking, and time-of-day data.”
• “Beyond planning for the workday consumer, develop other nuanced target personas by infusing emotion data into personas. Understand the facets of emotions including feelings, neurophysiology, social-expression, and behaviors along with the observable traits for each and the software that can help measure them.”

It has to be said. This report was shared by an ad network – Microsoft – and says you should spend more on advertising. All ad networks always want you to spend more on their platform. That said, paid search is a proven marketing channel. As with everything: test, analyze, optimize, repeat.

The report. The Workday Consumer Has Logged In. 

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“Driving revenue and awareness from search relies on your website health — today’s success in organic search is about a lot more than just keywords and content,” said Shachar Radin Shomrat, CMO of Deepcrawl, in her presentation at The MarTech Conference. “It demands technically sound websites in today’s marketing landscape.”

“Over a longer timeframe, the technical aspects of your website play a huge role in how well your content performs,” she added.

If SEOs don’t take the time to optimize critical technical aspects of your site that influence page speed, indexing, and more, it could mean lost traffic and revenue.

Here are four key technical tasks SEOs should take care of to help increase organic visibility.

1. Optimize site architecture

“Architecture is your foundational stage,” Shomrat said. “If the overall website structure is not optimized for search performance, then any individual page on that site is not set up to have its best chance at being crawled, appearing with search results and ultimately converting into a revenue-driving asset.”

No two sites are the same, but most search professionals agree site architectures should generally have a logical flow with a hierarchy of pages. This helps users and crawlers make sense of your site.

2. Ensure pages are crawlable

Your pages should be accessible to search engines and users via valid status codes. SEOs should make sure the pages they want to be included in the index have a 200 HTTP status code.

Search marketers should also ensure their robots.txt files aren’t blocking pages they want to be indexed. A misplaced disallow directive could prevent crawlers from viewing your pages at all.

3. Check which pages allow indexing

Just because your pages are crawlable doesn’t mean they’re indexable. Marketers need to make sure their pages’ robots tags allow for indexing.

“If a page is not indexed by search engines, then it will not appear to users in their search results at all,” Shomrat said.

4. Improve page experience

People are less likely to convert on sites that offer poor experiences, such as slow-loading pages. Google and other search engines encourage site owners to optimize their technical structures to prevent this from happening, allowing their content to shine in the search results.

“If you do not fix your [technical] foundation, your content and keyword investments are not going to get the return that you expect,” Shomrat said.

The necessity of technical SEO

Paying attention to the technical quality of your site is vital to SEO success. Yet getting company team members and executives on board can be a tricky task.

“Creating a strong technical foundation for your website to rank well in Google and to provide an excellent experience to your site users involves a lot of moving parts,” Shomrat said.

“It expands beyond the boundaries of most marketing teams,” she added.

She encourages marketers to prove the worth of technical SEO to their teams by establishing clear goals and showing how their efforts are meeting them. She also recommends providing colleagues and executives with studies and other educational resources to show the full impact of technically sound sites for organic search.

“Get the support you need from leadership by promoting organic and website health KPIs as business-wide OKRs [objectives and key results],” she said. “There is great data out there about the impact website health and technical SEO can have as a comparatively low-cost customer acquisition channel.”

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SpamBrain. That is the name of Google’s AI-based spam prevention system that the search company launched in 2018, yes over a few years ago.

SpamBrain is credited by Google for catching about six times more spam sites in 2021 than it did in 2020, reducing hacked spam by 70% and reducing gibberish spam on hosted platforms by 75%.

SpamBrain. It is the first we are hearing the name SpamBrain, which Google said launched in 2018. Google referenced the 2018 Google spam report, specifically the spam trends section where Google talks about its “machine learning systems” to improve search spam detection.

Google confirmed that this is the first time they are talking about this name, SpamBrain, publicly. A Google spokesperson told us: “SpamBrain refers to our machine-learning/AI solution for fighting spam. Since we first started using it, we’ve been updating SpamBrain constantly, and it’s grown much more effective at detecting and nullifying both existing and new spam types.”

Google also said that SpamBrain “was built to be a robust and evolving platform to address all types of abuse.”

Spam improvements. Google said that in 2021 it made additional strides in detecting and thwarting search spam attempts. These highlights include:

• ~6 times higher identification of spam sites
• 70% reduction in hacked spam sites
• 75% reduction in gibberish spam on hosted platforms
• 99% “spam free” searches

More on spam. Google talked a bit about its spam-fighting efforts, saying that links are still important for ranking and that its link spam algorithm in 2021 helped “broadly identify unnatural links and prevent them from affecting search quality.” Google also released a two-part spam update, part one and part two of the spam updates in June 2021 and then a November 2021 spam update.

Why we care. You can check out the previous Google web spam reports from 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, and 2015 if you want to follow the progress.

In short, Google will continue to fight spam in order to try to keep its search results useful and of higher quality. While some sites may still get away with some spam tactics, Google is constantly launching new methods to detect and block those sites from ranking highly in Google search.

Long-term success in Google search should be about creating a spam-free site that ranks through the test of time. Build quality and build something you are proud of. Hopefully, your site will rank through all future spam and quality updates.

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A handful of new Interactive Add-Ons have arrived within TikTok’s For Your Page. These new additions are available globally for In-Feed Ads and will be unique creative additions that will allow for more customized, engaging ads.

These new features come in two different flavors, Standard or Premium. According to TikTok, standard Add-Ons are made to “reach lower-funnel marketing goals, like driving clicks and conversions” while Premium Ads move up the funnel to aid in “brand awareness and community building”.

The new Interactive Add-Ons are compatible with App installs, Conversion, and Reach & Frequency (Traffic, Video Views) campaigns.

Premium Add-Ons. The new elements to target the lower funnel include:

• Pop-out Showcase. This image element will lay over the ad with the ability to drive product clicks that can be accompanied by text.
• Gesture. With a tap or swipe, a user can interact to obtain reward credits in the ‘Gesture reward card’.
• Super Like 2.0. This is coming soon but will allow for an even more visuals after a user likes an ad, including a pop up card after the like.

Standard Add-Ons. The new elements to target the mid/upper funnel include:

• Display Card. Visually showcase brand messaging or offers via Display Card that transcends the standard card format.
• Gift Code Sticker. Contrary to the TikTok release, these arguably target the lower funnel as viewers can click for a code and copy it before heading to purchase.
• Voting Sticker. Leverage the community for their input with a traditional looking voting sticker.
• Countdown Sticker. Slap additional information over an ad for upcoming releases or important dates.

Why we care: These creative new ad enhancers are a great way to add interactivity for more ad engagement. According to TikTok “viewers who have shared, liked, or commented on a TikTok brand video are 150% more likely to buy a product or service” and these new elements will surely help with that interaction.

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