Did Google admit it uses click data for search? Not really.; Friday’s daily brief
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Good morning, Marketers, in one of our featured stories below, I covered how Google decides to rank different vertical search elements, such as the image carousel or news box, in the search results.
Gary Illyes explained about the process but also said that Google determines when to show images or videos or top stories boxes in the search results based on what it learns from searchers’ actions. So, if a lot of people click on image results from the main search results page, it is a sign that Google may want to show an image carousel box on that page.
This click data is not used for individual search results (i.e., to rank page A over page B or to rank image X over image Y). Google is using the click data to see if people are going from the web results, to the image or video results and if they do that a lot, Google may decide to show an image or video carousel box in the search results. Got the difference?
Barry Schwartz,
Click analysis consultant
How Google ranks features like news, videos, features snippets
Gary Illyes from Google explained in a recent podcast how Google Search ranks its vertical search results, i.e., news, images, videos, etc, within the core search results. Why does Google show an image carousel for a specific query in the fourth position and why does Google show videos for another query in the top position?
Google uses a number of methods for this but Gary Illyes explained that each index or feature bids, like you would in an auction, for each position. So a video carousel can bid based on the weights Google assigned it, to be in position three or position four and Google’s overall universal search system will figure out where to place it. Google also decides when to show a feature based on click data, which is super fascinating as well. This gets a bit technical, so we recommend you read more.
Display & Video 360 gets new frequency and reach metrics
Google is adding a dedicated data visualization in Display & Video 360 (DV360) to show reach gains for each campaign that spans across channels and has a frequency goal set at the campaign level, the company announced Thursday. In addition, DV360 will also calculate the added reach advertisers get for each Programmatic Guaranteed deal using DV360’s frequency management solution.
Why we care. Having access to real-time reach gains can help advertisers gauge their campaign performance and manage their programmatic campaigns across channels. This new data visualization may also enable advertisers to save time that might otherwise be spent experimenting to test the impact of their frequency management strategies across various media types. And, the added reach data for Programmatic Guaranteed deals can help advertisers understand how those deals add to the incremental reach they get for their frequency management efforts.
Google no longer allows multiple instances of fact check markup per page
Google has updated its technical guidelines for Fact Check structured data, saying that a page must only have one ClaimReview element and that multiple fact checks per page is no longer allowed.
The revised guidelines now say “to be eligible for the single fact check rich result, a page must only have one ClaimReview element. If you add multiple ClaimReview elements per page, the page won’t be eligible for the single fact check rich result.” Previously, the guidelines said “a single page can host multiple ClaimReview elements, each for a separate claim.” But that is no longer the case, now you can only have one ClaimReview element per page, not more, to be eligible to show fact check rich results in Google Search.
Why we care. If your site does show fact check rich results in search and you are using multiple ClaimReview elements on a single page, you may want to remove all ClaimReview elements but one. Google’s guidelines now only allow one per page and thus your rich results for Fact Check may stop showing if you are marking up more than one per page.
Quality threshold, nofollow vs sponsored and Google Ads script beta
Google quality threshold. Gary Illyes of Google explains that if you are on the edge of Google’s quality threshold, you can see your pages pop in and out of the index and search results. You’ll probably want to improve your quality if you see that.
Nofollow vs rel sponsored. When Google announced the new link spam update this week, there was been a lot of confusion around using rel=nofollow vs rel=sponsored. You do not, I repeat, do not, need to switch your nofollows to rel=sponsored according to Google.
Localized site signals. If you have an English site and then a localized French language site, Google generally will give the French site its own signals, apart from the English site, said Gary Illyes.
Google Ads scripts beta experience. Google Ads launched a beta version of the new Google Ads scripts experience. To see it, open your script and switch on the new scripts experience (Beta) toggle above the code. More details over here.
We’ve curated our picks from across the web so you can retire your feed reader.
- Advances in TF-Ranking – Google AI Blog
- Author Scores for Recommendations at Google – Go Fish Digital
- Daily SEO Fix: Auditing for Technical SEO Problems with Moz Pro – Moz
- Quiet Week After The Google Link Spam Update But Maybe A Blip Happening Now – Search Engine Roundtable
- Update to Advertiser Identity Verification Policy (July 2021) – Google Advertising Policies Help
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