This Week’s Industry News
Compiled by the Rocket Clicks Team
Top Stories
Google Gives Businesses Control Over “Attributes”
Not long ago, Google introduced attributes for local business listings. Typical examples of attributes include “Does this business have Wi-Fi?” or “Does this business have outdoor seating”. Up until now, these questions were answered solely by customers. Now, Google has given businesses the ability to answer these questions as long as they’re objective questions. A subjective question like “Is this business popular with locals?”, however, will still only be answerable by customers. Source: Google My Business Help
Bing Ads Officially Releases Expanded Text Ads
Bing’s beta period for Expanded Text Ads has finally come to an end with the full launch of ETAs to all markets. In addition to creating these ads in the web UI or the Bing Ads Editor, it’s also possible to import ETAs from AdWords to Bing. With this launch, Bing also gave some recommendations to make sure to test ETAs alongside standard ads in addition to taking advantage of extension setups. Source: Search Engine Land
40% of URLs on Page One Are Now HTTPS
At the start of the year, Moz reported that URLs with HTTPS made up about 25% of the search results. Fast forward to now, and according to Moz again, that number has increased to 40%. While there is a ranking boost associated with HTTPS, this jump is likely due to a higher adoption rate of the secure protocol. Source: Search Engine Roundtable
Google Testing Icons Next to Sitelink Extensions
Industry experts have recently noticed a new sitelink test popping up on the search results page. Google appears to be testing icons next to their sitelinks in the form of buildings, people, or a map icon. This appears to be a rather limited test and experts are puzzled as to how they will be able to dictate what kind of icon Google chooses to use for the sitelinks. Source: Search Engine Roundtable
AMP: The Benevolent Savior of the Mobile Web Being Used for Evil? Say It Ain’t So!
Reports of hacking and phishing attacks using AMP URLs have begun trickling out through the webmaster community. Internet tough guy-hackers have taken advantage of the fact that AMP content is hosted on google.com to instill a false sense of trust in their poor victims. So, even if you want on a link that looks like it will take you to google.com, don’t. You can’t trust anything anymore. Source: The SEM Post
Additional Commentary
PPC Click-Through Rates Increased 38% in Q3
Based on Kenshoo’s study of over 750 billion impressions and 13 billion clicks, author Christopher Ratcliff shares with us some interesting Q3 PPC insights. The most important being: Paid search click-through rates have increased by 38% last quarter. Ratcliff points out that, based on the study, Google getting rid of the right column ads played a large part along with many online retailer advertisers beginning to use more product-focused advertising on networks like Facebook and Google. The author also notes other various areas of growth last quarter like mobile now accounting for 43% of all clicks on the search network. Source: Christopher Ratcliff, Search Engine Watch
Long-Term SEO: Proving the Value Now
All too often, SEOs are confronted with the difficult task of explaining the wait-and-see nature of SEO. Clients tend to get impatient and have a hard time accepting that they might not see results for months. Thankfully, Casie Gillette is here to save the day by offering up a few ways to tackle this issue. Among the strategies Gillette offers for proving value are using case studies that show the effects of a properly executed plan, creating a use case on the current site to show relevant results, and continuing to “sell” the small wins that happen along the way. Source: Search Engine Land
