This Week’s Industry News
Compiled by the Rocket Clicks Team
Top Stories
Don’t Panic if Your AMP Traffic Suddenly Took a Dive
Out of nowhere Thursday, webmasters saw a huge drop in AMP related traffic. The drop in AMP traffic didn’t correlate with a boost to regular mobile sparking speculation that the sudden change was a reporting error. Google quickly confirmed the data loss was an Analytics issue and by 1:30 PM, Thursday had rolled-out a fix and told webmasters should see their data returning to normal soon. Source: TheSEMPost
Facebook Launches Two Month Star Ratings Test in Local Business Ads
From April 24th to June 24th, Facebook will be testing a new beta for business ratings in their ads. Pages that have been chosen to test these star ratings will have the ability to opt out should they choose to do so. Facebook stated they are running this open beta to “determine if showing business ratings increases conversions from ads.” Source: The SEM Post
Are There Still New Searches Out There?
This week Google announced that the popular statistic “15% of all searches are for never before seen queries” is still true. Google didn’t specify the statistics but the number makes sense when you think about the amount of non-English and voice searches that may have no result among the trillions of searches Google sees a year. Source: TheSEMPost
Google, Facebook & Others Cracking Down on “Worst Offender” Ads
The Coalition for Better Ads, which includes Google, Facebook, Microsoft & other ad industry players, are currently working on a road map to help bring down “Worst Offender” ads. These are what can be considered annoying ads that contain flashing images and autoplay videos. These obnoxious ads are causing users to download third party ad blockers and block ALL advertising because of them, causing companies like Google and Microsoft to lose ad revenue. Though no solution has been adopted yet, the Coalition for Better Ads stated that they will have a roadmap ready in the coming weeks. Source: The SEM Post
Project Owl: Watching Over Problematic Searches
Google has launched an initiative to combat the plethora of fake news and problematic content that has emerged as part of the “post-truth” world. This content is often partially or completely incorrect regardless of the facts while encouraging certain world views and opinions while. Google has developed 3 actions to identify content: a feedback form for search suggestions; a new feedback form for “Featured Snippets; and a new emphasis on authoritative content to improve search quality. Source: Search Engine Land
Additional Commentary
Impact Your Account Through Keyword Tiering
Jacob Baadsgaard shares his method of tiering keywords based on performance as a means to balance clicks, conversions, and ROI. This includes three different tiers: Highly profitable keywords, break-even keywords, and longshot keywords. The highly profitable tier should always get budget priority and never be limited by budget. The break-even keyword tier includes keywords with hit-or-miss results. This could include keywords that typically perform average, or keywords that could have potential in the future. The longshot keyword tier contains keywords that could be profitable, but the odds are not in your favor. These should usually be left pause unless you’re looking to push click and conversion volume. Source: Jacob Baadsgaard, Search Engine Land
The Slow, Steady Rise of HTTPS
Recent data reveals that approximately half of all page-1 search results on Google are now HTTPS secure. Dr. Peter J. Meyers at Moz evaluated the data and found that the 50% benchmark isn’t the result of a sudden spike, but the gradual adoption of HTTPS across the web. If this trend continues, and that is what the numbers project, HTTPS page-1 results will reach 65% by the end of 2017. Source: Dr. Peter J. Meyers, Moz Blog
