This Week’s Industry News
Compiled By Rocket Click’s Staff
Search Engine Study Sheds Light On Traffic And Engagement
In a recent study by Shareaholic it was revealed that the top five search engines have all seen traffic drops since December of last year. Bing and Yahoo saw declines of 31%. The study also showed the engagement levels between December 2013 and May 2014. Ask, Bing, and Yahoo were all reported to have higher engagement rates than Google, despite having much less traffic.
Source: Shareaholic
Google Reports On Android Users
At Google’s recent developers conference, it was revealed that there are more than one billion active Android users a month. At last year’s conference there were only 530 million active users per month. Additionally, Google reported that Android tablets represent 62% of the market share amongst tablets.
Source: Marketing Land
Yahoo Introduces Prime View
Yahoo’s new Prime View product will allow advertisers to buy display ads on a viewable cpm basis. It is only available only Yahoo sites and desktop right now. It is also only available for users in the US with global expansions coming in the near future.
Source: Marketing Land
Analytics Goals Can Now Be Applied As AdWords Conversions
Google has announced that AdWords users will now be able to set conversions using Analytics goals. This new feature will allow advertisers the flexibility to customize conversion goals, windows and values. Having the new conversion data in AdWords will allow for things like bid rules to be set on these values. Any changes made for these conversion goals will not affect Analytics reporting.
Source: Search Engine Land
Bing Ads Ad Group Level Bid Landscape Tool
Earlier this week Bing announced that their Bid Landscape tool will now be available at the ad group level. The tool is said to work the same way as it does on the keyword level, by using the last seven days of data to predict changes in performance that would result from a bid change. It will also have two modes of use; a default mode that will give you predictions without changing anything and a uniform mode that will set bids to a “sweet spot” it has determined. As of right now this new tool is only available to US advertisers.
Source: Search Engine Watch
AdWords Quality Score Primer Released
This week Google has released a whitepaper to advertisers understand and use quality score to create better performance in campaigns. In it they discuss some common misconceptions about what is important when calculating quality score. With quality score constantly being under debate it will serve to dispel arguments or encourage new ones.
Source: Search Engine Land
Updated AdWords Auction Video from Google
Along with other new videos, Google has released an updated version of their video on the AdWords Auction and Ad Rank. In it, Hal Varian (who has been making Google videos since 2009) returns to explain how rank is calculated using the most recent formula changes.
Source: Search Engine Land
Google To Add Parental Targeting
New tests have been spotted in AdWords. A new targeting option has been added to the Display Network Tab that targets “Parental Status”. It is currently only available to 5% of US advertisers right now with a full US release projected for later in June.
Source: Search Engine Watch
Study Reveals The Cost Of Mobile Implementation Errors
BrightEdge has compiled a study on mobile usage amongst businesses. In their findings, they found that 27% of sites have errors to some degree with their mobile implementation. The study also revealed 62% of organic searches show different results when searching on desktop versus a smartphone. As a result websites with mobile implementation errors could be losing an average of 68% of smartphone traffic.
Source: Search Engine Watch
Company Launches To Help People With “Right To Be Forgotten” Service
With the European Courts decision to allow websites to be forgotten on major search engines, a new business has started to help with removal requests. Reputation VIP has launched forget.me, an online service that helps individuals with link removal request forms from Google. They serve as the middleman between the user and Google and offer “predefined texts” to explain why the link should be removed.
Source: Search Engine Land
Google Expands Knowledge Graph With Instructions
As part of Google’s efforts to grow the Knowledge Graph, Google has started to show step by step directions for relevant searches. In most instances, these search results will show up in a bulleted list for common “how-to” search terms. If the instructions are short enough, all steps will be shown in the Knowledge Graph. Longer instructions will require a click through to a site after several steps.
Source: Search Engine Land
Google Launches Domain Registration Service
Google has announced the release of Google Domains. Currently the service is an invite-only beta service. Those using the services will be offered website building tools from Squarespace, Wix, Weebly, and more. Google Domains will not charge customers a fee for private registration and all domains come with 100 email addresses and the ability to have custom subdomains. The service comes out being slightly cheaper than GoDaddy’s rates.
Source: Search Engine Watch
Survey Says Social Media Users Aren’t Influenced By Marketers
In a report by Gallup, 62% of consumers say that they don’t feel any influence in their purchasing decisions as a result of social media. The survey was made up of 18,000 respondents of various ages. Amongst Millennials, only 48% said that social media wasn’t a factor in their purchasing decisions. A majority of respondents claim that social media was primarily used to keep in touch with family and friends.
Source: Marketing Land
Notable Commentary
Showing Clients Their SEO ROI
The battle in SEO goes beyond making your site more relevant in Google’s eyes. A big part of the struggle at times is convincing clients that their investment in SEO is paying off. Neil Patel of Search Engine Journal offers up some suggestions for calculating the ROI on your SEO campaigns so you can demonstrate to clients your SEO work is making an impact.
Analysis: Neil Patel, Search Engine Journal
10 Misconceptions Around Link Building
A lot of misconceptions surround link building in terms of what you can promise clients and what you can’t. In the end, it isn’t an exact science. Julie Joyce of Search Engine Land details 10 link building assumptions clients often make that should nip in the bud.
Analysis: Julie Joyce, Search Engine Land
The History And Ethics Of Clickbait
The Hubspot blog has an interesting entry on the history and ethics surrounding clickbait-those “7 Pizza Toppings That Are Secretly Ruining Your Friendships” type articles we so eagerly click on. Check it out!
Analysis: Ginny Soskey, HubSpot
eBay’s New Study Has People Talking
Ginny Marvin from Search Engine Land has released a recent article that discusses why eBay’s newest study has been drawing attention. The study titled “Paid Search Is Ineffective” uses data collected from its AdWords efforts to make assumptions on the effectiveness of paid search efforts. She explains why eBay; who is known for having really bad ads, has made inaccurate assumptions.
Analysis: Ginny Marvin, Search Engine Land
