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Good morning, Marketers, what if Microsoft hadn’t fumbled so hard with smartphones? 

Today is Bill Gates’ 66th birthday, and regardless of how you feel about him, his successes and failures have helped shape the environment that we market in. Bing is the default for Windows, making the search engine an important consideration for some B2B marketers or for brands with audiences that primarily use desktop devices. I also regularly see PPC experts praise the efficiency that Bing Advertising offers, although they acknowledge the tradeoff in search volume.

Returning to my question at the top, Gates once said that, “The greatest mistake ever is whatever mismanagement I engaged in that caused Microsoft not to be what Android is — that is the standard [non-Apple] phone platform. That was a natural thing for Microsoft to win.” Gmail, Google Maps and Search were among the top 20 free apps in Apple’s app store last year, even though iPhones are pre-loaded with Apple’s own mail and map applications (Google pays Apple to be its default search provider on iOS). If Microsoft had succeeded, Google’s ecosystem might not be the powerhouse it is today and perhaps search marketing would look less like a monopoly, or maybe just a different monopoly.

George Nguyen,
Editor

Core Web Vitals: SEOs aren’t sold the work was worth it

Since its announcement in May 2020, the page experience update generated much speculation among SEOs. This was because it made user experience more of a Google ranking factor than it had been before and because it was announced more than a year ahead of its rollout. Before it went live, Google told us that “Page experience remains one of many factors our systems take into account. Given this, sites generally should not expect drastic changes.”

Now that the update has completely rolled out, SEOs are reflecting on how it actually played out for their brands. Although opinions vary, the general consensus seems to be that the page experience update didn’t result in major rankings fluctuations, but ROI isn’t just on the SERP — “Performance optimization may not be a silver bullet for rankings, but we don’t optimize just for that,” said Detlef Johnson, Search Engine Land’s SEO for developers expert. “[Core Web] Vitals, as determined by Google, are the tip of the spear that you can sharpen to cut through the network to load the experience faster, which can lead to more add-to-cart actions because it builds confidence and trust,” he added.

Priority Hints, a new, experimental feature to help site owners and Chrome browsers prioritize which resources to load first, can help you deliver a faster experience to your users. It can be used to boost the priority of the LCP image, causing LCP to happen sooner and thus improve the associated metric — in a test on Google Flights (shown above), Priority Hints improved LCP from 2.6 seconds to 1.9 seconds. Conversely, you can also lower the priority of above-the-fold content that may not be as important, like the second, third or fourth images in a carousel.

Read more here.

Google makes it easier to remove images of kids from the search results

Google is now letting anyone under the age of 18, or their parent or guardian, request the removal of their images from the Google Search results. The removal request can lead to the image no longer appearing in the Google Images tab or as thumbnails in any feature in Google Search, the company said.

Why we care. Sometimes teenagers and kids do rash things with their phones. Having these controls in place can help undo some of the harm. On a more professional level, this may give more tools for online reputation management firms to deal with some content removal within Google Search.

Read more here.

In 2022, retailers will lose half of sales on backordered items unless they compensate with experience, according to Forrester

Research company Forrester has released its 2022 consumer and customer experience predictions, highlighting pandemic-related issues and evolving consumer sentiment. Here are the most important predictions for search marketers:

• Brands stand to lose 50% of their sales on backordered items unless they compensate with customer support. Brands that can stabilize their supply chains suggest in-house alternatives to products that are out of stock and proactively message customers about shortages and expected availability are in the best position to curb customer churn.
• Customers will want some pandemic-era services to be part of the new normal. People may have become accustomed to services like remote health appointments, curbside pickup and senior shopping hours; removing them wholesale could be a mistake.
• One-fifth of retail and consumer goods firms will compromise on customer experience. Over the last few years, consumer demands, like faster fulfillment, have resulted in poor conditions for workers at companies like Amazon. Now, nearly 40% of U.S. consumers say concerns about companies’ labor practices influence their purchasing decisions.
• Company values will continue to be a differentiator. By July of this year, three-fifths of Fortune 500 companies had committed to climate action, up from 32% the year prior. “Brands that take a stand on more highly charged issues will cater to a small segment of hyper aware consumers with a personal connection to those values,” said Lai et al.

Why we care. These predictions align with what many businesses have been experiencing and how consumer sentiment has changed since the start of the pandemic. While most of the predictions aren’t directly related to SEO or PPC, they may affect reviews, ad campaigns and customer loyalty, which greatly influences strategy for search marketers.

Read more here.

The non-impact of URL length, iOS 14’s effect on ad revenue and morbid Squid Game memes

No, URL length doesn’t matter. “I’m currently only aware of one part of our systems where the URL length plays a role. That part is canonicalization,” Google’s John Mueller said in the latest #AskGooglebot video, adding, “If we find a shorter and cleaner URL, our systems tend to select that one. This does not affect ranking, it’s purely a matter of which URL is shown in Search.”

Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising earnings both up over 40%. Both Google and Microsoft released earnings statements on Tuesday. Year over year, Google Ads grew 43% (from $37,095B to $53,130B) and Microsoft Advertising’s business was up 40%. It seems that YouTube’s earnings weren’t impacted as dramatically as some might have expected by Apple’s app tracking transparency initiative.

Just for fun. The first two are funnier/more disturbing if you’ve seen Squid Game — tip of the hat to Suganthan Mohanadasan and Crystal Carter. And, here’s one I think SEOs that work for publishers will really be able to relate to, courtesy of Izzi Smith.

The post Core Web Vitals: SEOs look back and shrug; Thursday’s daily brief appeared first on Search Engine Land.

In August, Google introduced a new system for generating title links (the title of a search result in Google Search). “This is because we think our new system is producing titles that work better for documents overall, to describe what they are about, regardless of the particular query,” the company explained.

However, during the new system’s initial rollout, SEOs provided example after example after example of titles that not only failed to describe what the page was about, but may also confuse users and deter them from clicking through. Fortunately, the situation has since improved, but placing blind faith in Google’s new system can mean that you’re ceding control over a crucial aspect of your content, which could ultimately affect your business. Below, you’ll find a synopsis of how Google’s title changes have evolved, how you can verify whether your titles have been changed and what you can do to regain control over them.

Title changes: Then and now

A tale of two title changes. Google has been adjusting titles links for a long time. In 2014, the company explained that it might change a title to match the query (to a certain extent). This is an important detail because Google would later cite these historical practices as precedent for its new system — a justification that some SEOs found misleading as the magnitude and impact of the changes contrast sharply.

“[More recently,] I’m rarely seeing examples in the wild of noticeably worse rewrites for large-scale sites that I’ve done in-depth audits for,” said Brodie Clark, Australian SEO consultant, “This was definitely not the case initially (for about a month post-update), but Google seems to have since turned down the dial and made the update work as intended.” The other SEOs that spoke to Search Engine Land for this article shared similar experiences.

The first weeks of the title change rollout. When the new title change system rolled out in August, SEOs took to Twitter to share examples of poorly rewritten titles in the search results. “While many of the title overwrites made sense and were unlikely to negatively affect performance, there were many (too many) examples of title overwrites gone awry,” said Lily Ray, senior director, SEO and head of organic research at Amsive Digital.

SEOs feared that rewritten titles might be inaccurate or simply worse than what was in the title tag. While the title changes do not affect rankings, the title itself can influence clickthrough rates (CTR), thus also potentially impacting business KPIs such as revenue. Consequently, Google’s botched rollout of title changes fueled a movement among some SEOs who demanded a way to opt-out of the changes.

At one point, Danny Sullivan, a cofounder of Third Door Media (Search Engine Land’s parent company) and now public liaison for Google Search, also advocated for a similar feature: “As a site owner, I hate this. I want Google to use whatever page title I give it. Google argues back that it has to be creative, especially in cases where people have failed to provide titles. I’ve argued in the past that as a solution, Google should provide site owners with some type of ‘yes, I’m really really sure’ meta tag to declare that they absolutely want their page titles to be used.”

The nature of Google’s title rewrites. “It appeared that Google was truncating some article headlines in strange ways that changed the meaning of the title,” said Ray, “In other cases, it seemed that punctuation, like quotation marks or dashes, caused the title to break early. In even rarer and stranger situations, Google would choose anchor text or other article text to display as the title, which was occasionally taken out of context and was a poor representation of the full page content.”

“[Google] seemed to latch on to any type of header tag and really didn’t like the pipe character and overt branding,” said Colt Silva, SEO engineer at iPullRank. During our own analysis of Search Engine Land titles that changed in the search results, we also noticed that Google had a proclivity for removing the pipe character.

Google has since improved its system for rewriting titles (more on that below). To illustrate some of the types of title rewrites that we’re still seeing in the search results, Clark assembled a collection of examples from Search Engine Land article titles.

Here is Clark’s analysis of some of the changes:

• There were many instances of adding the site name with a hyphen when the site name wasn’t included in the <title> tag. And additional examples where the vertical bar with the site name was changed to a hyphen (a commonality among sites that I’m seeing). Interestingly, most SEOs still prefer the vertical bar post-update.
• Long title tags that result in truncation are simplified at key sections of the snippet. For example, #3 has the removal of a complete section of the title link, with the site name then added in with a hyphen.
• Complete replacement was happening rarely for Search Engine Land, but there was the odd instance where Google was replacing the title link, such as for #4. In this example, the H1 was taken to replace what had been written in the <title> tag. 

Google has since improved its title rewrites. After the initial blowback from the SEO community, Google’s Danny Sullivan published a post explaining why Google made the title changes. Several weeks after that, the company published more help documents on controlling titles and descriptions in Search. Just as important, Google’s explanations seem to be accompanied by improvements to its title change algorithm.

“Fortunately, many people submitted feedback and examples to Google, which caused them to acknowledge that they were still refining the title change,” Ray said, “Since then, it’s clear Google has made improvements to the title overwrites and even reverted many of the worst offenders back to their original <title> tag.”

“As soon as title-change-mania started, we saw one of our biggest e-commerce clients have 5% of their title tags changed without any real effect on their CTR,” Silva said, “Shortly before the Google announcement of rollbacks, we saw it drop to 2%. The client was concerned about a couple of high-traffic keywords, but those have since been rolled back and it’s no longer a point of discussion in any of our meetings.” 

What to do if you suspect Google is changing your titles

If you’ve noticed fluctuations in your CTRs, it may be worthwhile to investigate whether Google has changed your title link. SEOs and tool providers have come up with numerous ways to do this — we’ll discuss a few of them below.

“Essentially, you’ll need a way to start tracking and trending titles. You’ll need to collect your site’s popular search terms, and then gather the Google SERPs title and compare it to the actual title,” Silva said, adding, “This Search Engine Land article is a solid highlight of options to track title changes. In addition to that, there’s Thruuu, Keywords in Sheets solution, and this creative bookmarklet to inject titles into a SERP.”

Ahrefs users also have a new tool that enables them to export title changes for deeper analysis. Brodie Clark has provided instructions on how to get started with it and how he analyzes the data.

The new tool is in the “Top pages” tab underneath the “Site Explorer 2.0” heading. Once you’re there, you’ll have to toggle the “SERP titles” button and change the date for comparison. Next, you can export the data for analysis.

“There are important aspects to keep in mind when interpreting the data to ensure you’re getting an accurate depiction,” Clark said, recommending that SEOs remove new URLs and URLs that are no longer ranking so that they’re only looking at titles that are eligible for comparison.

“Changing the grouping of the rows to the top pages based on est. traffic that has had a title link change, we can see trends for what has changed,” Clark said. At this point, you’ll have to perform a manual review. “When completing the manual review, you’ll also need to look out for titles that have manually changed for pages during the comparison period,” he added.

What you can do if you’re unhappy with how Google changed your titles

Some titles may still be unsatisfactory — it can be argued that the example in line #3 from the chart above is less informative than the original title, for example. Unfortunately, there is little you can do to directly change Google’s title links, but embracing a more holistic view of the issue can help you craft more informative titles and avoid bad rewrites from Google.

One thing you can do to bring a particularly inaccurate title change to Google’s attention is to submit feedback: “Google created a form where you can submit your feedback for incorrect or egregious titles,” Lily Ray pointed out, “Otherwise, pay attention to when the overwrites take place and what they look like; this could provide insight into potential issues Google may have with your titles and offer some inspiration about how to adjust them. Google also offers clear examples about the types of titles it intended to overwrite, so you can evaluate whether your titles fall into any of those categories.”

“If you’re seeing poor title links for your site, try to look at it from a non-biased point of view,” Clark recommended, “Are you keyword stuffing? Is the title accurate enough? Is the text using too much boilerplate content? All are important aspects to consider before making the judgment that Google has done something wrong. If you’re confident that they are at fault, try to make the on-page content more closely aligned with what you’re trying to achieve.”

“This is the perfect opportunity to start testing,” Silva said, recommending that SEOs “Follow the scientific method from hypothesis to conclusion and find why an algorithm has latched onto a specific block of text [to replace your title tag]” Since you’re likely in control of your title tags and on-page content, you can use these levers to see what works for your business, your audience and Google’s algorithms.

The more things change, the more they stay the same

For SEOs. We’re now accustomed to optimizing for rich results, featured snippets, knowledge panels and dozens of other non-traditional search features, but titles — as Google has now reminded us — are one of the oldest forms of on-SERP SEO. While its system for title links has improved, SEOs will have to double-check their titles moving forward to ensure that they follow Google’s guidance so users see what we intend for them to see, instead of an inferior title scraped from anchor text, for example. This will simply have to become part of your workflow and best practices will adapt to account for Google’s title changes.

For the industry. We rely on Google for traffic and Google relies on us for content to show users. When the title changes rolled out in August, Google said it wasn’t new, which was only half-true as the search engine has been known to replace titles, but had not done so to the extent that we’ve recently experienced. What’s more, it was showing title links that could have confused users and deterred them from visiting our pages. It cannot be said for certain that SEOs holding the company accountable for the flaws in its new system was what moved the needle and got Google to “revert many of the worst offenders back to their original <title> tag,” as Ray put it, but it is something that search marketers will likely have to continue to do in order to advocate for our businesses and the audiences they serve.

The post Navigating Google’s title changes: The rollout, what’s happening now and what you can do about it appeared first on Search Engine Land.

NerdWallet, the popular personal finance company, cited Google as a concern for financial growth and said the company saw a Google Search ranking decline in 2017 within its recent S-1 filing.

S-1 filing statements. The S-1 filing specifically cited Google as a factor that “could harm our business, operating results and financial condition.” Here is the full quote:

“We are dependent on internet search engines, in particular, Google, to direct traffic to our websites and refer new users to our platform. If search engines’ algorithms, methodologies, and/or policies are modified or enforced in ways we do not anticipate, or if our search results page rankings decline for other reasons, traffic to our platform or user growth or engagement could decline, any of which would harm our business, financial condition and results of operations.

We are dependent on internet search engines, primarily Google, to direct traffic to our platform, including our website. Search engines, such as Google, may modify their search algorithms and policies or enforce those policies in ways that are detrimental to us, and without prior notice to us. If that occurs, we may experience significant declines in the organic search ranking of our search results, leading to a decrease in traffic to our platform. We have experienced declines in traffic and user growth as a result of these changes in the past, and anticipate fluctuations as a result of such actions in the future.

In addition, Google may take action against websites for behavior that it believes unfairly influences search results. Google does not publish guidelines explaining the types of behavior that may trigger an action. For example, in 2017, Google took action against us which temporarily resulted in lower search rankings and decreased traffic to our website. Our ability to appeal these actions is limited, and we may not be able to revise our content strategies to recover the loss in domain authority, page rankings, traffic or user growth resulting from such actions. Any significant reduction in the number of users directed to our website or mobile application from search engines would harm our business, revenue and financial results.”

2017 ranking issues. “In 2017, Google took action against us which temporarily resulted in lower search rankings and decreased traffic to our website,” NerdWallet said. We reached out to NerdWallet to learn more but the company was not willing to comment. So we dug in using third-party tools including Semrush and Searchmetrics, and it appears the drop in traffic was in May 2017.

What did Google do in May 2017. Google did not release a “confirmed” search algorithm update in May but there was a substantial unconfirmed update in mid-May 2017. I covered it on Search Engine Roundtable, and you can see there were a lot of SEOs that noticed this update too. Glenn Gabe also dug into this update back in 2017, calling this unconfirmed update a substantial one.

So it seems like NerdWallet was hit by this May 2017 unconfirmed update.

Not a manual action. I don’t think this is what Google would consider a manual action, so to say. “Google took action against us” may not be accurate. With these algorithmic updates, Google does not take actions on specific sites but rather aims to improve the overall quality of the search results. With that, some sites might rank higher for some queries and some might rank lower.

To say “Google does not publish guidelines explaining the types of behavior that may trigger an action,” as cited in the S-1 filing, is also not exactly accurate. For Google manual actions, Google specifically publishes detailed information around manual actions, including a tool to tell you if you do have a manual action, what is a manual action, how to fix your site if you do have a manual action, and the list of manual actions you can see.

What was it? I do not believe NerdWallet suffered a ranking issue related to a manual action but rather an algorithmic issue related to the unconfirmed May 2017 update.

Nerdwallet success. But NerdWallet has been super successful with its Google rankings and traffic from Google organic search. Look at this chart from Semrush showing the site going from 6M in visibility to close to 25 million in visibility over the next five years or so.

How did the company achieve such amazing Google organic search success? The Hoth offered some ideas in this detailed write-up from inside NerdWallet’s efforts.

Why we care. If anything, this shows you that no matter how big or small your website or business is, everyone is at risk of suffering a ranking decline in Google Search. Those ranking declines can make or break businesses of all sizes and are clearly cited as a factor that “could harm our business, operating results and financial condition” of NerdWallet. It has been cited by other businesses as well over the years.

No business is immune, which is why diversifying your sources of traffic to your website has always been of huge importance to all online businesses.

The post NerdWallet blames Google ranking issues in S-1 filing appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Google Search Console’s public-facing testing tools will be aligned more closely to the URL Inspection tool, the company announced today. Google said it is updating these tools’ “designs and improving features to be fully aligned with the URL Inspection tool.”

Which tools are impacted. Google said this is impacting specifically the AMP, Mobile Friendly, and Rich Results testing tools.

What is changing. Google is updating the design and improving some of the features of these three public-facing tools. Specifically, these fields will be both on the public-facing tools and the URL inspection tool:

• Page availability – Whether Google was able to crawl the page, when it was crawled, or any obstacles that it encountered when crawling the URL.
• HTTP headers – The HTTP header response returned from the inspected URL.
• Page screenshot – The rendered page as seen by Google.
• Paired AMP inspection, Inspect both canonical and AMP URL.

What it looks like. Google shared this screenshot of the rich results public testing tool and the new design and features:

Why we care. This should help you align what you are reporting on between the various Google tools. Just this morning Google said a discrepancy between the URL inspection tool and the crawl status reports may cause confusion. Having all these tools more aligned will lead to less confusion and a more efficient use of your time.

The post Google Search Console testing tools to match URL Inspection tool appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Google has just published two new help documents to help publishers control what Google shows in the search results for the title and description of the listing. Also, Google introduced a new term for the title of a search result, “title link.”

Control your title links in search results. The first document is named control your title links in search results and it first defines what a “title link” is. A title link “is the title of a search result on Google Search and other properties (for example, Google News) that links to the web page.”

Google then uses a screenshot to point to the title link:

The document then goes through best practices for writing <title> elements, how Google creates title links for the search results, how to avoid common issues with <title> elements, and how to submit feedback to Google on this topic.

As a reminder, in August, Google made a change to the title links that upset a number of publishers, Google then explained why and scaled it back a bit.

Check out the full help document over here.

Control your snippets in search results. The second new help document is named control your snippets in search results and it first defines what a snippet is. A snippet “is the description or summary part of search result on Google Search and other properties (for example, Google News).”

Google then uses a screenshot to point to the snippet:

The document then goes through how snippets are created, the differences between rich results and meta description tags, how to prevent snippets or adjust snippet length, and the best practices for creating meta descriptions.

Check out the full help document over here.

What changed. What changed with the help documents is that Google made two separate documents, instead of having these in a single document. Google also added the term title links, added examples of how Google adjust title links and other minimal changes to the text.

Why we care. These documents should provide additional clarity on how Google shows your search result snippets in its search results and how you can better control what comes up in Google Search. Also, I always found it awkward writing about the title in the search results, so having a defined name for it, i.e. “title link,” makes it easier.

The post Google publishes new help documents on controlling titles and descriptions in search appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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

Good morning, Marketers, Google’s Search On event was yesterday and we’ve covered all the announcements below.

The leading announcement was MUM’s integration with Lens to produce the first instance of multimodal search available to the public (launching in English in the coming months). Although it’s not a complete departure from what we’re used to, being able to snap a photo and add some text is definitely a new way to search. 

At the event, Google provided an e-commerce use case for it (more on that below). I’m interested in learning more ways you think these capabilities might benefit businesses. Send me an email at gnguyen@thirddoormedia.com (subject line: A picture and a thousand words), and don’t hold back, these capabilities were unheard of a decade ago, yet here we are.

That’s just one of the many announcements from Search On, keep on scrolling to get caught up on newly announced SERP features, enhancements and more.

George Nguyen,
Editor

MUM brings multimodal search to Lens, deeper understanding of videos and new SERP features

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

• MUM enhancements to Google Lens (shown above): Google demoed a new way to search that combines MUM technology with Google Lens, enabling users to take a photo and add a query. E-commerce is another potential use case — users can take a picture of a pattern on a shirt and ask Google to find the same pattern on socks, the company provided as an example.
• Related topics in videos: Google is also applying MUM to show related topics that aren’t explicitly mentioned in a video. This will be launching in English in the coming weeks, and the company will add more visual enhancements over the coming months. It will first be available for YouTube videos, but Google is also exploring ways to make this feature available for other videos.
• “Things to know”: This SERP feature lists various aspects of the topic the user searched for — for example, if the query were “acrylic painting,” the searcher might see a step-by-step guide or tips in this section. This feature can enable users to see the different dimensions other people typically search for, which may help them get to the information they’re looking for faster.
• Refine and broaden searches: This set of features act like search suggestions in the SERP, enable users to get more specific with a topic or zoom out to more general topics.

Read more here.

Google search gets larger images, enhances ‘About this result,’ gets more ‘shoppable’ and more

While MUM was the highlight of Google’s Search On event, the company also announced a number of changes to the search results that are important for search marketers to understand. These changes include:

• More visually browsable search results. For queries in which users may want to explore information visually, like “painting ideas,” Google may show a more image-heavy results page. This type of results page may also display for apparel-related queries.
• “About this result” enhancements. Initially launched in February and expanded to include ranking information in July, this transparency feature now includes what the site in question says about themselves (which can be pulled from places like the “About Us” page) and can also show web results about the site, such as what others are saying about it, or related results about the topic.
• Shoppable search. Now, when users browse for apparel on mobile, Google may show a visual feed of related items in various colors and styles, along with other information like style guides, videos or local shops. This feature is powered by the Google Shopping Graph and is currently limited to the U.S.
• Local in-stock filters. Beginning today in English in the U.S., UK, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland, users may see an “in stock” filter that allows them to see if nearby stores have a specific item available on their shelves.
• Shopping with Google Lens. Soon, Google app users on iOS will see a new button that makes all the images on a page searchable via Google Lens. Similar functionality will also be arriving on Chrome for desktop: Users will be able to select images, video or text on a site to see search results in the same tab. Unlike the iOS version of this feature, which is only available in the U.S., Lens in Chrome will be available globally in the coming months.

Why we care. Review these new changes Google has rolled out and will be rolling out. See how you and your clients can leverage some of these changes to generate more business and traffic. The one area of concern is the About this result section having third-party information outside of Wikipedia that may be hard to change if it doesn’t have the most positive or accurate information about your company.

Read more here.

Another record-breaking holiday shopping season? Perhaps not…

Why container shipping delays are a big deal for e-commerce PPC in 2021. “The holidays this year are going to be even more different than last year,” said Fred Vallaeys, CEO at Optmyzr, “The effects of much higher shipping costs are going to be significant and ripple throughout the retail ecosystem.” In his post, Vallaeys breaks down how increased shipping costs will impact what retailers stock, the structure of their PPC campaigns and how customers may adapt.

You wrote an amazing article — here’s why influential people aren’t sharing it. This Twitter thread from SparkToro contains some pointers on why you’re not getting amplified and how you can go about changing that.

Not by design, but still racist. Under the “Safety” section of a People also ask box, Google showed “What percent of Fort Collins is Black?” Google Search Liaison Danny Sullivan explained how this unfortunate coincidence might’ve occurred. I’m not sure if this was a factor, but biased language models can result from internet training data, and it’s on every SEO and user to submit feedback so that the internet can be a place that’s safe for everybody.

What We’re Reading: The case for zero-party data

“When your data request is communicated transparently, 0P data helps build more trusted customer relationships that lead to higher lifetime value and 0P data, unlike some other methods, is free,” wrote John Cosley, senior director, brand marketing at Microsoft Advertising, “Plus, it’s more likely to be compliant and accurate, so incorporating it into your overall data strategy can better protect you as industry regulation evolves.”

With the looming demise of third-party cookies, there’s been an increased emphasis on first-party data, but, as Cosley reminds us, data that customers willingly provide you (zero-party data, or 0P data), is “the digital version of walking into a business and being immediately greeted by staff who ask how they can help you. It’s the main difference of how 0P data delivers a better value exchange over other consented models. The consumer now has skin in the game that forms a connection and directs the conversation.”

Brands can and should use zero-party as part of their larger strategy, which could also include first- and second-party data. One of the points Cosley emphasized was that brands should be mindful of how they’re asking for it: “You’ll find some opportunities immediately and others that will take more time to nurture. It could be off-putting for a person’s first experience with your brand to come with too many potentially personal questions, so gauge your approach accordingly,” he said.

He also shared the following tactics on obtaining your own zero-party data and using it in your advertising:

• Set up Universal Event Tracking (UET) to collect data to measure and tune your ad campaigns.
• Leverage tools like Custom Audiences to deliver personalized messages and offers with UET data.
• Use remarketing to reengage customers and prospects.
• Create look-alike, or Similar Audiences, lists and segments based on signals obtained through the above to provide more personalized ad experiences at greater scale.

The post Google unveils multimodal search, new SERP features; Thursday’s daily brief appeared first on Search Engine Land.

While MUM was the highlight of Google’s Search On event, the company also announced a number of changes to the search results that are important for search marketers to understand. These changes include the launch of larger and more visually browsable search results for some queries, enhancements to the “About this result feature,” a more “shippable” Google search interface, in-person shopping experiences from home and more.

Visual browsing with larger images

Google has rolled out a new, more “visually browsable” interface for some search results pages. You can see them for some searches that contain a keyword plus the term “idea” after it, like [painting ideas] or in the example GIF below, [pour painting ideas]. Google said this interface makes “it easier to visually browse to find what you are looking for.”

This launched earlier this week and I believe Google calls these large image blocks “image universal blocks.” Not only will they appear for idea-related queries but they can also be displayed for apparel queries.

About this result enhancements

Google initially launched the About this result box in February 2021 and then in July added more details like ranking information to the box. Now, Google is showing even more information in the About this result box: The additions include what the source says about themselves, which can be pulled from places like the site’s about us page. Google can also show web results about the site or page, such as what others are saying about the result and also related results about the topic from other sites.

Google told us that you cannot control what information is being shown from the related results or what others are saying about the result. The search engine uses a set of undisclosed queries to find this information and only sites that meet a certain quality bar can show up in those sections of the About this result box. Google said it will keep an eye on abuse or manipulation of these features but currently, there is no way to tell Google if the information in the box is incorrect and should be removed. Technically, you can probably use the submit feedback button but it is unclear how quickly Google can react to such requests.

Currently, Google said the About this result feature has been used over 400 million times, which translates to a small percentage of searchers.

Shoppable search

Google has made the Google search experience more “shoppable” for apparel-related queries. This new experience should make it easier to browse for apparel on mobile right from your search results, the company said. Google’s example is when you search for “cropped jackets,” Google Search will show you a visual feed of jackets in various colors and styles alongside other helpful information like local shops, style guides and videos. Google said this is powered by the Google Shopping Graph, which was announced at Google I/O earlier this year.

In-person shopping at home

Google is adding new in-store inventory in order to make the online at-home shopping experience feel more like shopping in-person at the store. Google said people want to experience in-person shopping from home so now you can filter the results using an “in stock” filter to see if nearby stores have specific items on their shelves.

This is launching in English in the U.S. and select markets, including the UK, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland on September 29th.

Shopping with Google Lens

Soon, Google app users on iOS will see a new button that makes all the images on a page searchable via Google Lens. This feature will be arriving soon, but it is currently planned only for users in the U.S.

Similar functionality will also be arriving on Chrome for desktop: Users will be able to select images, video or text on a site to see search results in the same tab. Unlike the iOS version of this feature, Lens in Chrome will be available globally in the coming months.

More MUM In Google

Google has announced a slew of new features around the expanded use of MUM in Google Search. This includes Google Lens and video search features, plus how Google will use MUM in the new “Things to Know,” refine this search and broaden this search and more. See our article over here for more details.

Why we care

Review these new changes Google has rolled out and will be rolling out. See how you and your clients can leverage some of these changes to generate more business and traffic. The one area of concern is the About this result section having third-party information outside of Wikipedia that may be hard to change if it doesn’t have the most positive or accurate information about your company.

The post Google search gets larger images, enhances ‘About this result,’ gets more ‘shoppable’ and more appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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

What is MUM?

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

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

MUM enhancements to Google Lens

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

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

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

Related topics in videos

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

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

Features that will eventually leverage MUM

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

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

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

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

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

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

More announcements from Search On

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

Why we care

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

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

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

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

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

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