This Week’s Industry News
Compiled By Rocket Clicks Staff
Google Acquires Adometry
Adometry is an Austin-based firm that specializes in marketing analytics and attribution modeling. At this point, the plan is to incorporate Adometry’s capabilities to strengthen Google Analytics Premium. The company will operate independently for the time being until employees transition into new roles at Google.
Source: Marketing Land
New Google Now Feature Combines Online And Offline Shopping
Android users may now receive Google Now alerts if an item they have been looking at online is available to purchase at a brick and mortar store nearby. Google ties the items you’ve been shopping for to your account and if Google recognizes that a store near you has the item, a notification via Google Now cards will be sent. At this time Google Now only reports store locations and price; it is unable to tell you if it is in stock or not.
Source: Search Engine Watch
Widespread Mobile Fails
Yahoo! and Kenshoo recently teamed up to analyze a survey conducted on multi-device advertising strategy. Although it is true that a brand can take the first step to optimize for mobile by implementing a mobile-friendly landing page, Yahoo! and Kenshoo found that 44% of users are disappointed that companies don’t have optimized sites. They also found that only 35% of companies use mobile-specific bidding strategies and even fewer have mobile strategies for copy and keyword lists.
Source: Search Engine Land
Bing Testing New Look For Search Results Page
It appears Bing is experimenting once again with the look of their SERPs. The latest test has removed the underline in hyperlinks while keeping the links blue in color. Unsurprisingly, Google recently made a very similar change to their search results page.
Source: Search Engine Land
New DuckDuckGo Goes Beta
Known for protecting the privacy of their users, the search engine DuckDuckGo has announced the release of a new beta site. The new site offers smarter answers and a refined look. New additions also include auto-suggest, places, and image search. The company’s goal is to make the beta site the new default within the next month after it receives feedback from users.
Source: Search Engine Land
Google Now Offers Indoor Maps For Android
Here’s more news on updates for Android users, as Google has enabled indoor maps to appear within Android search. A Google Now card may appear where applicable that will show you stores in the mall. Users can get step-by-step directions to a pin on the map showing the store.
Source: Search Engine Land
BingAds Now Lets You Review 50,000 Keywords
BingAds has announced an update to their Keywords Tab that will allow advertisers to review up to 50,000 keywords within the user interface. In the past, users were only able to see up to 5,000 keywords at a time. Other updates include faster load times for data and a better display of rows. Bing also states that more changes will come later this year.
Source: Search Engine Watch
Cutts Discusses The Future Of Backlink Relevance
In the latest Matt Cutts video, he explains that backlinks still have “many, many years left in them” as a key factor in Google’s algorithms. Ultimately, Google wants to figure out if a page is an authoritative source and if it is delivering content that matches the needs of the user. Backlinks can help establish these things, but Cutts believes that as Google understands language more and they shift to conversational search, backlinks will slowly become a little less important.
Source: Google Webmasters on YouTube
Tweet To Add Items To Amazon Cart
Users of Amazon and Twitter will now be able to add items to their Amazon cart using #AmazonCart and the product link in a tweet. Users can complete the transaction at their convenience the next time they log into Amazon. To use the service, users must connect their Amazon and Twitter accounts. Twitter will not be receiving a cut of the sale but may benefit in the form of promoted tweets.
Source: Marketing Land
Notable Commentary
That Won’t Go The Way Of The Dodo
Character Counts For Everything
No one loves writing to a word count, but it’s important to think about not only the content of message but how long it takes for you to deliver it. Kevan Lee of Buffer App offers up the ideal length for messages in a variety of mediums, from tweets to presentations, in order to maximize user/audience engagement.
Analysis by: Kevan Lee, Buffer
Results Are In For Household Income Targeting
In a recent article from 3Q Digital, Bailey Lau presents the preliminary results of a test done with Google’s newly available Household Income Targeting. She tested all of the targets with a 0% modifier in an e-commerce account to see if there was any difference between the income tiers. Unsurprisingly she found that household incomes in the top tiers had a higher return on ad spend and a higher average order volume. She also gleaned some interesting CPC insights.
Analysis by: Bailey Lau, 3Q Digital
Do Facebook And Google Have Problems?
For a long time, it’s been perceived that Facebook and Google have been losing new, younger users because they are struggling to tailor their services to the mobile platform in a profitable manner. And while there is a grain of truth to these claims, David Rodnitzky believes both giants will ultimately survive because they have identified trends early and taken steps to address them in their advertising model.
Analysis by: David Rodnitzky, Marketing Land
Phew! Agencies Are Here To Stay
In a recent article by Mark Ballard from Search Engine Land, he analyzes current events in combination with the state of the paid search advertising industry to explain why Google will likely not be cutting out “AdWords middlemen”. Top reasons include the complexity of managing campaigns and the fact that developing advanced products and services that already exist elsewhere may not be worth the investment.
Analysis by: Mark Ballard, Search Engine Land
Negative Keywords, Wherefore Art Thou?
Nicholas Viggiano from Seer Interactive posted this in-depth article dissecting different methods of blocking irrelevant traffic in AdWords. He describes how to correctly use negative match types, how to use negatives effectively, and alternate uses for negatives such as filtering ads into the correct ad group.
Analysis by: Nicholas Viggiano, Seer Interactive
The Importance Of User Intent
Most SEO content strategies revolve around what types and iterations of keywords users are searching on and then tailoring content to those keywords. But all too often the user intent behind these searches isn’t properly taken into account. Laura Lippay explains why the user intent behind keywords is just as important to content strategy as the keywords themselves.
Analysis by: Laura Lippay, Moz
AdWords Editor Going The Way Of The Dodo?
While Google has implemented many new developments in the online AdWords interface, they have not released any major updates to Editor in a many moons. This could make one wonder if Google plans to phase out Editor in favor of a more advanced online interface. Diane Pease from Search Engine Watch writes that it is very possible that this could happen, and maybe sooner than most of us would think.
Analysis by: Diane Pease, Search Engine Watch
What Google Knows About The Sites You Own And Why It Matters
We’re all aware that a number of different factors go into determining our site’s rankings, but just how much does Google know about you as a site administrator and how does that knowledge affect how Google perceives your sites? Cyrus Shepard (who looks a little surprised to be on camera in the video screenshot) explains in last week’s Whiteboard Friday.
Analysis by: Cyrus Shepard, Moz
Surprise: The New Google SERPs Are Genius
The predictive heat mapping service Eyequant explored the reasoning behind the new format for Google search ads. As they point out, the new format is a smart move for Google for various reasons and will likely increase ad click through rates.
Analysis by: Eyequant
