This Week’s Industry News
Compiled by the Rocket Clicks Team
Top Stories
Check Image Alt Text to Prepare for Mobile First
While Google and SEOs know the value of adding alt text to images from an SEO aspect and for web accessibility, this week Google reasserted how important the alt text can be. Google emphasized the need for alt text, especially on mobile leading to speculation that Google may be running into an issue crawling and comparing desktop and mobile pages. Source: TheSEMPost
AdWords Adds YouTube Video Views Targeting for RLSA
Google quietly announced the capability to use YouTube video views to power your RLSA audiences. In addition to video views, you may also use channel interactions to power those lists. In Google’s own words, they stated “You can Remarket to people who have previously interacted with your YouTube channel.” Source: Search Engine Roundtable
Google Image Search Displaying Video and Recipe Results
The most recent update to Google’s mobile Image Search allows videos and recipe data to be displayed within the search results. Revised image schema allows images to convey useful information about a video or provide the complete recipe for especially scrumptious looking foodie pictures. Source: Search Engine Land
AdWords Ads No Longer Showing on Sites With Pop-Under Pages
Google has recently updated their AdSense ad policies to no longer allow the use of ads on pop-under pages. On this topic, Google has stated “We do not believe these ads provide a good user experience, and therefore are not suitable for Google ads.” In addition to this, Google will no longer permit the use of ads on sites even if the pop-unders don’t contain an ad. Source: Search Engine Journal
The Science Behind Geo-targeted Search Results
Google let loose some of the details regarding how they geo-target search results. In the past, geo-targeting was primarily based on server location to determine where to best rank a site, but the primary location indicator utilized is now the ccTLD (country code top-level domain). Search Console settings are also a factor when geo-targeting search results. Source: Search Engine Journal
Analysis
Exclusive Features in the New AdWords Interface
Ginny Marvin shares all of the exciting features you can only find in the new UI for AdWords. One feature you will find are promotion extensions, which are currently only available in beta in the “old” interface. Another feature is household income targeting in Search campaigns, which could previously only be applied via location targeting. Upcoming features for the new interface include landing page performance insights, custom in-market audiences, and a new integrated Google attribution products. Source: Ginny Marvin, Search Engine Land
The Power of Server Logs to Evaluate Crawl Spikes
It’s not unusual to see strange spikes in Google Search Consoles crawl stats, but figuring out where they are coming from is the hard part. Glenn Gabe at Search Engine Land took the Search Console data for a client site and matched it with site server logs to get to the bottom of the odd activity. What he discovered is that spoofed Googlebots, generally up to no good, are a major source of spikes as well as URL technical issues. In the end, if you are really concerned about crawl spikes the best way to dig in and match spike dates to server log files to see what they can reveal. Source: Glenn Gabe, Search Engine Land
