Google announced last week that it rolled out an update to the local search and map pack results. It began on November 30 and finished on December 8.
We noticed really dramatic differences in ranking on December 6, 2021. My agency named the update “The Vicinity Update” because the most significant impact we saw was that Google made it so that smaller, less established businesses that are closer to the user are now ranking better than overpowered businesses further away. Google said that it “rebalanced” the factors that make up the algorithm and we have observed that proximity got a big boost while some relevance factors declined.
What industries did it impact?
This update was dramatic, and in my findings, is the biggest update we have seen in local search since the Hawk update in 2017. Some industries are seeing the impact more than others. We are seeing huge differences for lawyers, home services, insurance, dentists, and many others. It’s important to note that you won’t likely see the impact of this update unless you are doing grid tracking that shows you how far away from your office you rank.
The winners
The winners in this update are:
Businesses that don’t have keywords in their business name but have strong competitors that do.
Secondary locations for prominent businesses. For example, I’ve seen almost uniformly, across every example I’ve looked at, that the primary location for a business took a hit but their newer offices increased. Here is an example in the insurance vertical:
Top 3 Rankings Before
Top 3 Rankings After
Difference
Business A – Main Location
848
668
-180
Business A – Second Location
67
97
30
Business B – Main Location
122
98
-24
Business B – Second Location
21
46
25
The losers
The losers from this update are:
Businesses that ranked really far from their office.
Businesses with keywords in the business name.
For example, below are screenshots from a business that meets both criteria. One of the keywords that describes their service is a part of their actual LLC name. They used to rank really far from where they are located and no longer do.
The pins indicate the location the user is searching from. Green pins indicate the business ranks in the top three results, yellow pins indicate the business ranks near the top three results and red pins mean the business does not rank near the top three results.
Why we care
Google has weighted keywords in the business name too heavily for as long as I can remember. This often leads to businesses adding them, regardless of the fact that it breaks Google’s guidelines, because it has such a significant impact on ranking It has also led to Google showing fake listings in the search results instead of real businesses. With this update, businesses that are newer and trying to follow Google’s guidelines should have a much greater shot of ranking.
Microsoft Bing has launched a new travel search experience, the company announced Friday. The new experience consists of travel-oriented search results pages for destinations as well as a new trip-planning and booking hub known simply as the Travel Guide.
Why we care. For years, search engines have been expanding their travel offerings to the dismay of online travel agencies — Bing’s new travel features only continue that trend.
The new destination search results pages are visual-heavy, which may make them more compelling to users. Many of the search features, like hotel results or the “Explore destination” carousel, take users to other Bing properties. And, since they’re more visually compelling than a standard search listing, it may be even more difficult for OTAs to compete in the search results.
The new Travel Guide is quite similar to Google’s travel portal, but both Bing’s Travel Guide and its destination search results seem to be designed for discovery, which may help it serve customers that are in the initial stages of their planning.
Revamped destination search results. Searching a destination on Bing may trigger its new travel search experience (shown below for the query “honolulu”).
This search results page format includes a large search feature containing a link to the Travel Guide (more on that below) for the destination, as well as carousels for local attractions and news. The best time of the year to visit and hotel listings are also prominent on the page, along with Tours and activities ads.
Introducing Bing’s Travel Guide. “The Travel Guide serves as a jumping-off point for your trip-planning needs,” Microsoft said in the announcement. The guide’s landing page shows numerous destinations and provides users with ideas for the type of traveling they’d like to do (solo, romantic or budget, for example). It also showcases flights to various locations, coupons and deals, sample itineraries and travel packages.
The Travel Guide page for Amsterdam. Image: Microsoft.
Users can also search for a particular destination to see potential itineraries, attractions, and flight and hotel information. Clicking on the “Book flights” or “Book hotels” links takes users to Bing’s flight and hotels results, respectively.
Online commerce has undergone a shift. With the decrease in in-person experiences, companies have realized that their digital commerce channels need to support the entire customer experience.
Ensuring that digital transactions are seamless and secure is certainly part of this experience. Beyond this, however, commerce experiences need to fit into a broader digital experience strategy focused on building and deepening relationships.
Engaging experiences have several key characteristics. They are convenient. They are personalized. And they respect customer data privacy. This calls for a robust, sustainable and secure first-party data strategy.
This guide discusses the challenges facing digital commerce today and the key role that a first-party data strategy plays in overcoming them. We will also discuss the importance of customer data platforms (CDP) in supporting that strategy. By the end, you should understand why digital commerce today demands an AI powered CDP to succeed.
“You wouldn’t build a house without having a strong foundation,” Niki Mosier, head of SEO and content at AgentSync said, “And you shouldn’t build a website without having a strong foundation either, and without constantly making sure that foundation is strong and that there are no cracks in it.”
Optimizing the architecture of your site can help search engine crawlers find and index your content, which enables them to show those pages to users in the search results. It can also help send link authority around your site as well as make it easy for visitors to find what they’re looking for.
In her session at SMX Create, Niki Mosier shared the strategies she uses to ensure that the foundations of her site are solid and identify opportunities for greater search visibility.
Crawl budget analysis
Crawl budget refers to the number of URLs per site that Googlebot (or any other search engine crawler) can and wants to crawl.
“Every website gets a crawl budget, which can vary depending on the size of the site and the frequency that new content is being published on the site, so having an idea of what a website’s crawl budget is can be really beneficial in making informed decisions on what to optimize,” Mosier said.
Conducting a crawl budget analysis enables you to get a more comprehensive view of:
How your website is being crawled. “If you identify that Googlebot is the client, you can use log file analysis to find out how Googlebot is handling the URLs on your site [and] if it is crawling any pages with parameters,” she said.
How fast your site is. While there are many tools that can tell you how fast your server reacts, a log file analysis shows you how long it’s taking for a bot to download a resource from your server.
Indexing problems. “Getting into the log files can really show us whether bots are having trouble downloading a page fully,” Mosier said.
How often a URL is being crawled. The crawl frequency can be used to figure out if there are URLs that a search engine crawler should be crawling but isn’t, or vice versa.
Crawling problems. This tactic can also reveal when a crawler is encountering 404 errors or redirect chains, for example.
“When it comes to actually doing crawl budget analysis, there’s a couple of tools that are helpful,” Mosier said, recommending ScaremingFrog’s Log File Analyser, Microsoft Excel and Splunk.
Image: Niki Mosier.
Mosier outlined her steps to performing a crawl budget analysis:
Obtain your log files; Mosier recommended working with at least a month of data.
Look at URLs with errors.
Assess which bots are crawling which areas of your site.
Evaluate by day, week and month to establish patterns that may be useful for analysis.
See if a crawler is crawling URLs with parameters, which may indicate wasted crawl budget.
Cross-reference crawl data with sitemap data to assess for missed content.
Image: Niki Mosier.
“Once you’ve dived into the server logs and have a good sense for what your crawl budget looks like, you can use this data to prioritize your SEO tasks,” she said, adding that SEOs should “prioritize based on the impact that fixing different areas of your site will have, the dev resources needed to fix issues and the time to fix those issues.”
Finding out how well your site is functioning can help you put the right strategies in place to drive more traffic to it.
Image: Niki Mosier.
“Doing regular site audits is a great way to keep a pulse on what’s happening with our websites,” Mosier recommended. In addition, Google Search Console should be used to check for Core Web Vitals or schema issues, for example. “Using monitoring tools, [such as] Rank Ranger, Semrush and Ahrefs, these are great ways to stay alerted to any issues that might pop up with your website,” she said.
Assessing the search results pages (SERP) can give you a feel for the landscape of the keywords you’re targeting. In addition to seeing what search features may be available, the SERP also shows you which sites are ranking higher than you — “See what those sites are doing; looking at their source code can tell you what schema they’re using,” Mosier said, adding that you should also be viewing their pages to scope out what their headings and user experience look like.
Updating your old content can also result in a rankings boost. Mosier recommends paying extra attention to your headings and above-the-fold content. Adding schema markup may also enable your content to appear as a rich result, which may also increase your visibility on the SERP.
“Using tools like Frase or Content Harmony can help you see what other sites that are ranking for the keywords that you want to be ranking for are using for headings, what kind of FAQ content they’re using and what content they have above the fold,” she added.
“Paying attention to page speed is definitely an important metric to think about, [but] I think it’s also important to pay attention to what the industry average is,” Mosier said, “So, go and look at where your competitors’ sites are ranking or are at as far as page speed and kind of set that as your benchmark.”
It’s also important to assess individual page speed versus overall site speed: “You want to see what each page on your site is loading for and make improvements on a page-by-page basis and not just look at the site speed as a whole because pages are what is ranking, not necessarily the whole site,” she said.
Additionally, how your pages render can affect your user experience as well as what search engine crawlers “see.” “Is there a pop-up or a really big header on a particular page that’s taking up a lot of the above-the-fold space? That can be a problem,” Mosier said, noting that page speed can also impact how search engines render a page.
Recognizing patterns is a major part of successful SEO strategies, yet it can seem daunting with the sheer amount of data available. Murat Yatağan, consultant for growth and product management at Brainly, recommends marketers address these issues using data segmentation tactics.
“You need to focus on generating insights based on patterns that you can recognize,” said Yatağan in his presentation at SMX Next. “An important part of a successful issue strategy is relying on these patterns that you have recognized — these things are telling you a story.”
Yatağan suggests marketers use one of two data segmentation tactics — with a developer’s help, if needed — to serve as the foundation for your SEO strategy: custom scraping using Regex/Xpath or segmentations post-crawl.
“I segment data by traffic,” he said. “It’s organic traffic along with the crawl information that I gathered because these two [metrics] enable me to triangulate the data about the website, so it shows me some patterns.”
Here are four common patterns Yatağan recommends marketers look for to gain insights from their data segments.
Author productivity and credibility
Yatağan presented an example of a campaign using segments to track authors, along with the numbers of the pages they have produced. Grouping the data this way gives SEOs insights into data they wouldn’t see by only looking at broad metrics, such as pageviews or dwell time.
Image: Murat Yatağan
“This shows you that it’s not just the amount of the articles that are being created, it’s more about the credibility,” he said. “By just looking into this data, you have a direction.”
Content quality and traffic
Obviously, content quality is a huge factor when it comes to SEO and readability. But, it’s often difficult to measure its impact on site traffic and rankings.
Yatağan gave an example of how he segmented data using word count. Though most SEOs consider this metric less relevant than other factors, it can still serve as a good measuring stick when comparing pieces of content.
“I don’t think word counts are good indicators of quality of the page by themselves,” he said. “But you can use them to compare different pages performances against each other.”
“So it’s not about the number of articles that were produced, it’s the amount of quality,” he added.
Image: Murat Yatağan
These metrics can help marketers determine which articles provided the most information and how well they were written.
Similar content affecting traffic
Yatağan pointed to a graph showing a segmented group of content displaying pieces that were near-duplicates or thin content — both poor quality signals. These segments illustrated how they correlated to decreases in SEO sessions.
Image: Murat Yatağan
Viewing similar content in this way can show a direct correlation between poor traffic numbers and low-quality content. These segments can serve as the foundation for content strategies.
“I’m not only saying it’s a strategy, but that it’s a finding that leads you to create a strategy,” Yatağan said.
Effects of internal links to content
One of the most effective ways to get more eyes on your content is internal linking. They tell search engines and readers that it’s important information. But if marketers are struggling to prove their worth, data segmentation can help.
“Links are a big part of the web experience. So this is how you navigate the web,” Yatağan said. But, unfortunately, there are many instances where adding internal links to your pieces doesn’t lead to an increase in SEO sessions.
Image: Murat Yatağan
Yatağan suggests looking for those pieces that had the highest interaction via comments, click actions or some other activity. Then, focus your internal linking on those pieces.
“Identify the content that has the largest amount of comments,” he said, “Then you can restructure your internal linking and show your users and new visitors that there’s a big community talking about it.”
“Your community is also creating value that you have been adding to the website by creating this content,” he added. “So, it is part of your entire website experience and you might want to boost it.”
Google recently added a feature to Google Maps to dock local listings to the bottom of the map interface. When you search for a business, you can click the “dock to bottom” button. That will trigger Google Maps to move that local listing to the footer of the map interface so that searchers can reopen the place later.
What it looks like. Here is a screenshot of this feature, that I’ve been seeing for the past week for some of my local maps queries:
Use case. Searchers can use this to dock numerous places to the bottom of the page so they can organize a trip. It can also be used when you are searching for a local business and multiple options interest you, you can dock the ones you like and dig into which one you prefer to go to. If you are a foodie, you can dock a bunch of restaurants to check out later. There are many use cases.
Why we care. This is another Google Maps feature that helps searchers browse local listings and save them for later. It is unclear if this feature will stick (no pun intended) and last for a long time or if the feature will go away at some point. It seems like a useful maps feature and I kind of like it.
Marketers give it a 50/50 chance they will attend an in-person event, conference or trade show in the first half of 2022, a new MarTech survey has found. It’s a statistic that should scare any event organizer who had hoped this two-year uncertainty for in-person gatherings was nearing an end.
Respondents to MarTech’s Event Participation Index gave the likelihood they would attend an in-person business event in the first half of 2022 a 5 out of 10. That outlook improved slightly for the second half of 2022, when marketers gave the likelihood a 6 out of 10.
Marketers gave it a 7 out of 10 likelihood they would attend an in-person event in the first half of 2023, but the pandemic has shown us just how much can change in a year.
This past survey marked the eighth time we have fielded the Events Participation Index, and there’s a clear pattern in the data. When asked about the likelihood of attending events more than 6 months away, respondents were always more optimistic. But each time those far-away dates got closer, their comfort level fell.
For example, respondents in March 2021 gave the likelihood of attending an event in the first quarter of 2022 a 7 out of 10. But marketers give the entire first half a 5 out of 10 when asked again this November.
It’s not surprising, given the rise of new variants like Omicron and the reluctance by many to get vaccinated against the virus. But for event planners, it just means the optimism your registrants have today may not be there come event time.
The chart below shows the likelihood respondents gave for attending events within three months of the time the survey was fielded. It shows that we are indeed out of those darker periods where in-person gatherings were either canceled or not remotely feasible. But it also shows that we’ve yet to see a period where likelihood crosses 50%.
That hesitancy is also playing out in budgets. About 78% of the 220 marketers who took our survey said they are budgeted to attend only a small number of events in 2022.
“I think event producers should expect continued reduced attendance and plan for smaller, regional events,” one respondent said. “I think events need to shift away from the model where exhibitors need to commit a year or more out. Perhaps more pop-up type events that are more nimble and have more allure because of the intimacy and the opportunity for deeper connections.”
Virtual events or bust?
Just because potential attendees are wary of in-person events, that doesn’t mean they are all-in on virtual events. Respondents gave the likelihood they would attend a virtual event in the first half of 2022 a 6 out of 10 chance. What’s interesting is that was the same likelihood they gave for the second half of 2022 and the first half of 2023.
It suggests that just as there are likely people who will never feel comfortable at an in-person event, there are others who either do not see the value in virtual events or are “fatigued” by the sheer volume of virtual events that are available now.
“Virtual events are convenient, but they aren’t the same. I don’t want to sit on a virtual conference all day; the times are always weird and it’s too easy to skip a session if I have a project due,” one respondent wrote.
However, that comment represents the minority. Most respondents suggested that organizers continue to focus on hybrid and virtual experiences, especially if they need to once again cancel in-person shows.
“I prefer virtual events as an attendee,” wrote one respondent. “Limiting travel expenses and time has allowed me to attend more events than ever before. Some in-person is nice, but prefer this to be after an initial relationship is established and the goal and value of the offerings are clearly established.”
Our data also supported that. When asked whether they would prefer to attend events in-person or virtually, 27% said they preferred to attend in-person only, 34% said they preferred to attend virtually and 39% said they would prefer to attend in-person and access virtual components.
“I think people will expect hybrid events to become the norm,” wrote one respondent. “In-person attendance may stay a bit lower than historical numbers and virtual attendance will increase overall attendance significantly. Event hosts will play with pricing to figure out the ideal gap between in-person and virtual prices.”
No clear path for event organizers
Salesforce last week held its Dreamforce NYC event in New York, but concerns over the new Omicron variant led the marketing technology giant to step up safeguards, according to an email sent to attendees before the event that laid out the protocol.
“Complete an onsite rapid test through testing partner Senneca on December 9. Testing hours are 7:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. ET. COVID testing may take up to an hour so please arrive early and plan accordingly. Look for your Dreampass in your email once your vaccine record and tests are verified. You must have your Dreampass to enter the event space. Bring your favorite mask and be prepared to wear it while you’re onsite.”
While these safeguards certainly add a new hassle to in-person experiences, people are generally in favor of protocols like this if it means they can attend conferences. For example, more than 70% of respondents to our survey said organizers should mandate that attendees be vaccinated.
In fact, despite the Delta variant wave this year, marketers did attend in-person events in 2021. About 30% of our respondents said they attended up to two in-person business events this year. About 16% said they attended up to five events, 4% attended up to nine, and 4% said they attended 10 or more.
Of course, that also meant 46% attended no in-person events this year.
So what are organizers to do? Many companies are moving ahead with in-person conferences in 2022, as of now, but our data suggests that attendance at least for the first half of the year will continue to be below pre-pandemic levels.
If anything, the data we gathered highlights how deliberate companies need to be in making decisions on holding events. There is hope but also plenty of concern on the part of audiences about in-person safety that will certainly affect attendance. Meanwhile, just because virtual is cost-effective, that doesn’t mean audiences, particularly those who valued events for networking purposes, are going to accept virtual as an alternative to in-person.
“I think they should expect a pretty even split in their audience of folks who choose to take part in only virtual sessions versus attending in-person. Even for myself, I much prefer attending in-person but am starting to heavily use any virtual content, especially post-event,” wrote one respondent.
“I think two things are equally true,” wrote another. “Some people miss in-person events, but others have appreciated the time and money saved by attending virtual events. The companies that do virtual well will have an advantage going forward. Teleconferencing companies have made it easier for things like break-out sessions, replicating the networking benefits that come from in-person events.”
Google said “there’s an ongoing issue with our serving system in Google Search that’s affecting a small number of sites,” on Twitter this morning. Google confirmed at 11:30am ET, that it fixed the issue. The issue started at about 4:30am ET and lasted several hours.
The tweet. Here is the tweet so you can read it yourself:
There’s an ongoing issue with our serving system in Google Search that’s affecting a small number of sites. We’re working on fixing the root cause. Next update will be within 12 hours. ^gi
What is the issue. At around 4:30am there were reports, which I covered on the Search Engine Roundtable, that Google was having issues indexing or crawling or serving new content from both major and smaller publishers. I showed screenshots of Google not showing new content from publishers like the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and niche publishers like TechCrunch and The Verge.
Here are some of those screenshots:
But then at around 6:30am ET, it seemed like Google fixed the issue. Well, it seems Google did not fully resolve the issue because now the company officially confirmed the issue on Twitter.
Smaller publishers? If I look at what Google indexed on my personal site in the past 24 hours, it shows a story from yesterday, that was published before Google had these serving issues. And a story that I manually pushed to Google using the request indexing issue in Search Console. It does not show the several other stories I published this morning at the Search Engine Roundtable.
But even now, if I do a site command for wsj.com and filter to show stories in the past hour, I am still seeing the issue, after I thought it was resolved:
Resolved. Google has fixed the issue at around 11:30am ET today, here are the notifications Google posted about this:
We fixed the issue with our serving system. Newly published URLs should show up in search results at normal rates. There will be no more updates. ^gi
Why we care. If you are having issues with Google now showing your recent content in Google Search today, December 16, 2021, do not worry, it seems to be an issue on Google’s end. Google is working on resolving it.
Until then, I guess try to use Google Search Console to push your content into Google Search and hope that works. Also it is a time to remind you that having other channels to drive traffic to your site, like social media, email marketing, direct traffic and other means is important.
Now that it is fixed, you should now see your content showing up in Google Search.
Regulations such as the GDPR and CCPA and frameworks such as IAB TCF have dramatically changed the digital privacy landscape — for the better. They set the standard for providing transparency and choices for how data is used and shared with third parties.
Today’s consumers are increasingly concerned with protecting their personal data. At the same time, they demand more personalized experiences. This creates a challenge for marketers, advertisers, and publishers to respect customers’ privacy while also capturing consent, driving opt-ins, and delivering compelling user experiences. The solution for companies to bring privacy and personalization together through transparency, choice, and trust? A consent management platform.
Right now, companies have an opportunity to embrace the new norm the digital privacy transformation has ushered in and, by doing so, give themselves a competitive edge. In fact, 70% of customers say trusting a brand is more important now than ever before. And this shows — for every dollar spent on consent and preference management, businesses see an average 40x return on investment.
When it comes to keeping up to date on global compliance, the most effective solution is to implement a consent management platform (CMP) to maintain your compliance coverage and reduce risk across all your websites, mobile applications, or even CTV applications. But beyond that, it’s important to understand how a consent management strategy helps companies build customer trust, comply with global privacy regulations and meet business goals.
With the right consent management platform, you can capture and manage consent on web, mobile, and CTV applications; uncover hidden trackers and cookies on websites; configure branded banners using unique consent approaches based on location; and measure and optimize consent rates for maximum opt-ins. In short, a CMP can support you to operationalize compliance while building customer trust and meeting your business goals.
In this e-book, you’ll learn about important regulatory requirements, the role the tech industry plays in consent management, and best practices for setting up and leveraging a consent management platform.
