This Week’s Industry News
Compiled By Rocket Clicks Staff
Top Stories
Mobile Friendly Algorithm Update Coming To Bing
Bing is once again following Google’s lead by announcing an algorithm update that will take into account mobile-friendliness as a ranking factor. The criteria for what makes a website mobile-friendly is very similar to the criteria used by Google so websites who prepared for Google’s update should be good to go.Source: Search Engine Land
“Value Alert” Message Being Tested on Google Shopping Ads
Google has recently started testing a new message being displayed on shopping ads. The value alert tag is being added to certain products in shopping ads that are on sale or discounted in some way. Testing seems limited, but research has shown that the value alert message may only be triggered based on the size of the discount on an item. Source: Search Engine Land
Right To Be Forgotten Is One Year Old
In a little over a year, Google has received over a million European right to be forgotten requests. Of those requests, Google has complied about 40% of the time. Google has released a full report that details what kind of requests have been honored and which have been denied as well as other statistics for the first year of the right to be forgotten. Source: Search Engine Watch
Mother’s Day Trends Show Moms May Prefer Experience
Through search data and surveys in Mother’s Day gift trends, Google has revealed that both millennial moms and older moms are starting to prefer an experience over flowers. Mother’s day has become the number one day for searches related to spas and the number two day for searches related to reservations. While those search terms have gone up, searches related to flowers have gone down by about 20% over the last few years around Mother’s Day. Source: AdWords Agency Blog
New Patent Provides Hint Of New Quality Score System
SEO by the Sea have analyzed a new patent granted from Navneet Panda, a high level engineer of Google. It appears the patent primarily deals with a new way Google may calculate website quality scores. Among the new factors that may be considered are topical categorization, site search, and increased importance on branded searches. Source: SEO by the Sea
Users and Advertisers Falling Victim to Ad Injections
A Google study has found that millions of users and over 3,000 advertisers, which includes several major brands, are being plagued by ad injectors. These sometimes malicious programs drop unwanted ads into web pages, which causes advertisers to pay for traffic from ads that they didn’t even want to buy. Google’s study on the matter aims to raise awareness about the problem and shed light on who’s profiting from these ads. Source: Marketing Land
Google Trends is Now Including Data from YouTube Searches
You can now view YouTube search data on Google Trends going all the way back to 2008. By selecting YouTube in the “limit to” section in the Google Trends interface, you’ll be able to view search queries as well as differentiate the data by region and category. This allows you to see interesting video based viewership patterns, like searches for “turkey” spiking in the US in November, or searches for Rebecca Black spiking every Friday. Source: YouTube Trends
Answer Box Data May Be Coming To Webmaster Tools
Google’s Gary Illyes hinted that Answer Box Data may show up in Webmaster Tools in the near future. The comment came at SMX Sydney this Wednesday. It is likely that this information will only show up for webmasters who currently have websites displayed in the Answer Box system. SEO’s are hopeful that if this happens, it will provide insight on how an Answer Box may or may not affect traffic for organic results. Source: The SEM Post
Additional Commentary
Grading Campaigns in AdWords Could Help Performance
Keeping score of performance in an account can help identify issues for investigation. Columnist Frederick Vallaeys outlines several different ratios and scores that can be used to grade campaign performance. These include the Lin-Rodnitzky Score, Vallaeys Shopping Efficiency Score, Account Quality Score, and a report for the Percent of Ad Groups Missing Something. These different formulas can be used while managing an account to improve campaign profitability and efficiency. Analysis by: Frederick Vallaeys, Search Engine Land
Properly Expanding Your Business With Local SEO
Andrew Shotland tackles the topic of local SEO for businesses acquiring a new location or relocating a business. He provides a list of ten things to help ensure a smooth transition, including preserving as much of the old domains information, keeping the Google My Business pages active, and the proper order for updating NAP and older citations. Analysis by: Andrew Shotland, Search Engine Land
Growing Your Account with Dynamic Search Ads
Jeff Baum, Associate Director of Paid Search at Hanapin Marketing discusses the importance of Dynamic Search Ads due to several recent enhancements to the feature. It allows for additional traffic to be gained through website content as well as open up themes that you may not have thought of. Dynamic Search Ads are argued to bring in additional sources of revenue by reaching searchers that traditional keyword targeting failed to reach. The author also discusses in detail the Dynamic Search Ad process. Analysis by: Jeff Baum, PPC Hero
