This Week’s Industry News
Compiled By Rocket Clicks’ Staff
Local Searches Now Displaying Reviews In Knowledge Graph
Google has been testing reviews in the knowledge graph on and off for several months. But as Mike Blumenthal has reported, the reviews are showing more regularly. Review snippets bold text that is frequently repeated throughout all the reviews, such as “quick service.” It also appears that businesses with recent Google+ reviews have reviews displayed more often.
Source: Search Engine Journal
Cutts Reminds Us That The Body Of A Page Is Important Too
Matt Cutts posted a brief video that reminds webmasters to not lose focus of the content in the body of a webpage. Often people put a lot of thought into the head of a page due to title tags, meta descriptions, and more. In the video, you only see Cutts’ head floating without a body as a reminder that both are just as important.
Source: Google Webmasters on YouTube
9 Additions to Google’s Keyword Planner
Google has started to roll out all the changes stated on April 22, and users are starting to see changes in their AdWords interface. Some really awesome changes have rolled out in the Keyword Planner, including the ability to specify a time period and compare time periods as well as the visualization of mobile trends. Other new features to the keyword planner include the capability to see breakdowns and targeted locations, device segmentation, bid adjustments, and lastly visualizations and estimates for sub geo location breakdowns.
Source: Philly Marketing Labs
Business Manager Tool Rolls Out For Facebook
Earlier this week Facebook officially launched a tool that lets marketers and agencies manage multiple campaigns through one interface. “Business Manager” has features similar to Google’s MCC account where account administrators can assign roles and add or delete ad accounts. Users will be able to access ad accounts and pages without having to be friends with other people first.
Source: Mashable
Study Reveals Google+ And Yelp Reviews
In a recent study of 950 places in 20 major cities, review services by Yelp and Google+ were compared. The study showed Yelp has significantly more reviews per location and typically have longer reviews as well. It also found that 25% of Google+ reviews contained no text at all and only a star rating.
Source: Search Engine Land
Online Advertising Unveiling Browser Choice
The Digital Advertising Alliance is set to unveil a do not track solution that they are calling “browser choice.” This will allow consumers to opt-out of behaviorally-targeted online advertising. This is expected to be a popular choice for consumers as a survey found 87% of respondents would enable a feature like this.
Source: Marketing Land
Google Updates Webmaster Guidelines
In a recent blog post, Google announced an update to their webmaster guidelines to counter sneaky redirect practices. The update includes several examples to illustrate redirect-related violations. In addition, Google updated the hacked content guidelines and included instructions to identify issues and fix them if you believe your site was compromised.
Source: Google Webmaster Central Blog
Android Silver Program To Give Google More Control
It has been reported that Google does indeed have a “Silver” program in the works, which is designed to improve customer support for Android devices. It also reported that Google will be able to gain more control over the Android ecosystem with the release of Silver. Some ways that Google might be doing this include heavy ad campaigns as well as pre-installing only a limited number of non-Google apps. Other features of Silver devices include waterproofing and voice recognition.
Source: TechCrunch
Facebook Is King In Referrals To News Publishers
A recent study by Quantcast found that Facebook is behind 24% of mobile referrals to news and entertainment sites. The stats come from 12 months of data across the top 250 publishers using Quantcast Measure service.
Source: Marketing Land
Cutts Explains Why Google May Ignore Your Page Title
A user asked Google’s Matt Cutts why Google would ignore their pages title tag and use something else for the snippet title in the search results. Cutts responded by saying Google wants the title of the snippets to in some way match query of the searcher, which results in higher click through rate. The video explains the exact criteria Google uses when coming up with new title tags.
Source: Search Engine Land
Small Sites Can Outrank Large Sites According To Cutts
Smaller companies that are agile and can quickly respond to new ideas are going to achieve higher rankings than larger businesses who don’t have that liberty. Focusing on user experience and providing value to the visitor is another factor that has the potential to give smaller sites an edge in the competition. Bottom line, produce superior quality content.
Source: Search Engine Watch
Notable Commentary
Engagement Is Just Important As The Quality Of Your Content
When it comes to showcasing content in an effort to get links, we often talk about creating high quality content. But how visitors engage with that content is just as important. Other webmasters are more likely to link to content that provokes timely and frequent engagement from your users. Julie Joyce discusses strategies for upping engagement on Search Engine Land.
Analysis by: Julie Joyce, Search Engine Land
Implied Links And The Future Of Linkbuilding
How brand authority is calculated by Google has long been a topic of speculation. A patent filed by Google last month shed a little more light on the topic. The part of the patent most interesting: “implied links”. Simon Penson of Moz talks about how Google’s treatment of mentions, or implied links, represent the future of linkbuilding
Analysis by: Simon Penson, Moz Blog
Vic Gundotra Is Leaving Google
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard after 8 years, the famous Vic Gundotra, the brain behind the Google+ platform, is leaving Google effective immediately. Jennifer Slegg discusses what this means for Google moving forward.
Analysis by: Jennifer Slegg, Search Engine Watch
Become An Expert Search “Forecaster” to Boost Campaign Performance
Just as the weather changes throughout the day, so does search marketing performance. According to John Colsey from Search Engine Land, an easy way to turn this into an advantage is to “forecast” what the day will bring. By forecast he means utilizing hour of day reports and analysis to find trends in performance for your account. He also discusses how differently these trends can vary depending on device and day of week.
Analysis by: John Colsey Search Engine Land
Save Yourself An Hour Everyday With An AdWords MCC Script
In Frederick Vallaeys’ recent article on Search Engine Land he discusses how you can be saving a lot of time in your accounts by using Google’s recently released beta for MCC level scripts. He describes how these new scripts can be used in accounts as well as any restrictions to them. He also includes a script he created that can start saving you time today.
Analysis by: Frederick Vallays, Search Engine Land
Using Similar Audiences to Gain Reach in AdWords
Although the Similar Audiences function within AdWords has been around for some time, it is underused. Rebekah Diedo from Search Engine Land gives you some info on how they work and where you can find them. She also shares some of her experiences with them.
Analysis by: Rebekah Diedo, Search Engine Land
What’s Next For Paid Search Marketing?
Marketing Land has posted a video with an accompanying slideshow of a presentation given by Wister Walcott of Marin Software at this year’s SMX West. It includes current and emerging trends, new and upcoming products, as well as Marin’s vision for paid search.
Analysis: Marketing Land
