This Week’s Industry News
Compiled By Rocket Clicks Staff
Just A Dab Of Duplicate Content Won’t Hurt
In one of Matt Cutts’ latest webmaster help videos, he pacifies concerns about duplicate content that can sometimes be brought to the level of paranoia. It’s OK, he explains, to quote another website or if you have two versions of some content such as terms and conditions. But don’t try creating individual pages for every city served where the only difference in the content is the city name. That kind of behavior may bring the ire of Google upon you.
Source: Search Engine Watch
Another Paid Link Network Bites The Dust
Late last week Matt Cuts indicated that the Google webspam team is working to penalize webmasters who bought links through yet another paid link network. This time the culprit is Backlinks.com. This is the second Friday in a row that Cutts has announced a paid link network takedown. It has us wondering what the over/under is on this week’s victim?
Source: Search Engine Watch
Engagement Ads For Everyone
Google has announced that their new engagement ads will now be available. These are Display Network ads that connect consumers with visually rich and immersive experiences. Advertisers only pay when someone chooses to engage with their ad. Engagement Ads will be available on mobile and tablet and will be “shoppable”. Shoppers will be able to click and purchase right from within the ad unit.
Source: Inside AdWords
Bring On The News Feed Commercials
Facebook has launched a limited test of a new ad format that allows advertisers to purchase clips that will auto-play (without sound) directly in your feed. New changes to the Feed have so far been beneficial for video, with overall engagement up over 10%. The first ad to be tested is for the film ‘Divergent”, and has been rolling out this week. Once the video is finished, users will have the option to view two additional videos from the advertiser within a video carousel.
Source: Marketing Land
Facebook Offers New Way To Track Effect Of Ads On Offline Sales
Facebook is launching a new way for brick-and-mortar business owners to measure if their Facebook ads drove in-store sales, even if customers never clicked. Businesses can buy ads and then send Facebook privacy-safe data on who bought what, and Facebook will tell them how much people who saw the ads bought compared to those who didn’t. This is likely a step in the right direction and is important to watch because this is the direction our industry is heading, but will probably spit out a lot of flawed data at first.
Source: Techcrunch
Apple Building Mobile Exchange, Shifting Focus To Radio
Apple is reportedly quietly building an RTB (real time bidding) exchange to manage in-app ad buying. It is being said that Apple is concentrating on iTunes Radio advertising in order to build something to compete with Pandora’s ad model. A new RTB exchange would automate the entire process of in-app advertising.
Source: Marketing Land
Cutts Denies Algo Update Occurred Yesterday
On Thursday, many Google rank tracking tools reported a significant shift in SERP rankings. When pressed on the subject, Matt Cutts implied no update had taken place, asserting that Google tries not to roll out major updates around the holidays. Other SEOs have hypothesized that an adjustment to the interface or another change of that nature triggered the rank tracking tools to report inaccurate ranking shifts.
Source: Search Engine Land
Google Reveals Top Searches For 2013
Google released of a list of its top searches for 2013. Nelson Mandela held down the number one spot with Paul Walker coming in second and iPhone 5s coming in third. Cory Monteith and Harlem Shake rounded out the top 5. North Korea also made an appearance at number 10.
Source: Washington Post
Matt Cutts Confirms 15% Reduction In Number Of Rich Snippets
Matt Cutts confirmed that Google has reduced the number of rich snippets displayed in its search results by 15%. Cutts had announced the change was on its way a few months back and now it has become a reality. The impetus behind the move is to improve the quality of the authors being shown, taking rich snippets away from lower quality sites.
Source: Search Engine Land
Retailers Making It Snow Ad Spend This Holiday Season
The holiday season to this point has been particularly fruitful for retailers when it comes to their PPC initiatives. The record levels of spend we saw in 2012 were surpassed this year by 34 percent, with clicks increasing by 27 percent and impressions by 12.5 percent according to Kenshoo’s seasonal shopping reporting. Global paid search sales revenue grew by 19 percent.
Source: Search Engine Watch
Facebook Activity Doesn’t Appear To Affect Ranking
While there has been a lot of speculation over the years about whether Facebook activity is a factor in Google’s rankings, no real hard evidence has pointed either way. President of Stone Temple Consulting Eric Enge has a new study that sheds light on the mystery by providing evidence that Facebook Likes do not in fact influence ranking. His study of whether Shares impact indexing, however, came up inconclusive.
Source: Search Engine Watch
Notable Commentary
That Looks Great In An Ugly Sweater
How Can You Invest More In Content Marketing?
If over 90% of marketers are engaged in content marketing, why do less than 50% of them believe they are effective at it? Jim Yu argues that the key to earning the right to invest more in content marketing involves marrying the front end and back end of campaigns: audience and campaign measurement.
Analysis by: Jim Yu, Marketing Land
Measuring Content Effectiveness With Analytics
In a perfect follow-on to Jim Yu’s article, his buddy at Marketing Land Arnie Keunn offers up detailed strategies for measuring the results of content marketing efforts using Google Analytics.
Analysis by: Arnie Kuenn, Marketing Land
Local SEO Tips for 2014
Guillaume Bouchard of Search Engine Watch lays out the latest local SEO trends in the wake of Google’s Hummingbird algorithm update, as well as some turnkey strategies, links to infographics, and a list of useful tools.
Analysis by: Guillaume Bouchard, Search Engine Watch
7 Dream AdWords Features That Would Make Our Lives Easier
Ever wish you could add something to the AdWords interface that would make your life as an advertiser much easier? Well, you are not the only one! Rocco Baldassarre from Search Engine Journal lists and describes 7 things that would do just that.
Analysis by: Rocco Baldassarre, Search Engine Journal
Eye Tracking 101: How Your Eyes Move On A Website
Kathryn Aragon from Crazy Egg shines light on new and missed opportunities with your current website design. She focuses on eye tracking and movement as an important guideline to use when organizing your site to increase CRO and user experience. Check out the infographic she uses to see how your site compares.
Analysis by: Kathryn Aragon, Crazy Egg
Google’s Effort To Build The Star Trek Computer
Farhad Manjoo of Slate has an interesting piece on Google’s efforts to improve visual search and speech-recognition technology, an effort that dates back to comments made by the company in 2010. The company’s passion for Star Trek is guiding the way as they pursue a search experience based around the computer from the classic series. It may sound a bit far-fetched, but as Manjoo points out, they’re quite serious.
Analysis by: Farhad Manjoo, Slate
