This Week’s Industry News
Compiled By Rocket Clicks Staff
Google Touts Improved Conversion Rates, Lower CPCs Resulting From Enhanced Campaigns
Google says that around 2 million AdWords campaigns have converted to Enhanced status, and for the most part, they are achieving positive results. Early adopters such as Woodbridge Structured Funding and American Apparel have experienced lower costs-per-click, higher conversion rates, and the nebulous, yet always welcomed benefit of efficient time management.
Shocked, we all are.
Source: Search Engine Land
The Google Penguin Is Approaching
Much like the Terminator models, Google’s Penguin updates come back stronger than ever. Such will be the case in a few weeks, according to Matt Cutts, who confirmed the refresh would be significant and probably piss a ton of spammers off because they’ll finally get busted.
Source: Search Engine Land
The 10 Future SEO Commandments Of Matt Cutts
From the impending Penguin Update to Advertorials to Spam Queries, Google’s Boba Fett (Matt Cutts) addresses 10 things to pay attention to in the next few months. Cutts covers a lot in just a seven minute video, but it’s well worth your time.
Source: Search Engine Land
Google Adds Company Logo Schema To Knowledge Graph Results
While recipes and paintings are certainly important things for a search engine to know about, Google just added a new markup to schema.org that’s probably more crucial: organization logos. The new tag specifies which logo should be used in Google’s Knowledge Graph results, and may be utilized elsewhere on the results page down the pike.
Source: Search Engine Watch
WolframAlpha Now Offers Personal Facebook Profile Analytics
WolframAlpha has just rolled out an interesting analytics report featuring your personal Facebook profile. Logged in users can simply type “facebook report” into the WolframAlpha search bar to obtain statistics concerning your post frequency, engagement rates, friend demographics, photo dates/times, and other pieces of activity data.
Source Marketing Land
Google Tries out Swipetastic Carousels For Local
Jennifer Slegg at Search Engine Watch reports that Google is beta testing a new way of displaying local results as a scrollable horizontal “carousel.” It optimizes for mobile devices and tablets’ screen swipe style of user-interaction, but also has the benefit of placing more than seven results above the fold.
Source: Search Engine Watch
Yahoo Adds Real-Time Tweets To Newsfeed
In a brilliant move, Yahoo and Twitter have partnered to offer Yahoo Newsfeed users a plethora of real-time tweets that is personalized based on topic, past interests, and the new story in question.
Source: Marketing Land
Bing Stands By Its Partnership With Yahoo
Because why wouldn’t it?
Source: Search Engine Land
Google+ Gets Rid Of Games, Will Focus On Google Play
Plan your time-wasting accordingly.
Source: Google Support
Google Working To Reward Sites That Are The Authority On A Subject
Matt Cutts announced that Google is working on an algorithm to give sites that are an authority on a specific topic a boost for being that authority. Google has long had a similar algorithm in Google News but this the first time they’ve discussed expanding it to general search.
Source: Search Engine Land
Google More Concerned With Real World Impact Of Digital Products Now
Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt explained that Google Glass is in a long and limited distribution process because the company is far more concerned with the real world impact of its digital products than it was in the past. Schmidt engaged in this discussion while promoting his new book at Google Los Angeles last week in addition to addressing the though process behind other products in the past like Gmail and Google Street View.
Source: Marketing Land
Smartphone Shoppers Use Phones For In-Store Research
Similar to what we’ve noted in past weeks, mobile search doesn’t just help consumers find businesses to shop at, it also serves as a valuable research tool when browsing products in store. According to a new Google study, “Mobile In-Store Research: How in-store shoppers are using mobile devices,” 84% of smartphone shoppers use their devices to aid in their shopping while in-store.
Source: Search Engine Watch
Google Authorship Will Expand
Google is continuing to expand and experiment with authorship. At SMX West in March, Matt Cutts explained that while the majority of content on the Web is written, Google certainly wants to expand its understanding of authorship for other types of content on the Web. Google has certainly been trying to infer authorship for content, even when markup is not present. The practice has led to some notable errors, including Truman Capote being credited with writing a New York Times article despite the fact he’s been dead for nearly 30 years.
Source: Search Engine Land
Google+ Announces Related Content Option On Mobile Sites
Google has recently added a new feature to its Google+ platform that allows publishers with Google+ pages to recommend additional content to users browsing on their mobile website. The feature shows up regardless of a reader’s sign in to Google, and publishers are now able to alter their recommendation settings provided a line of JavaScript is added to their site’s code.
Source: The Google+ Developers Blog
Notable Commentary
That HAS A Google+ Profile
Everything You Need To Know About The Marketplace Fairness Act
Ginny Marvin has a fantastic breakdown of the Marketplace Fairness Act, which would require e-commerce stores grossing over $1 million in annual receipts to collect sales tax in certain states. Obviously, anything involving the word “tax” is going to elicit strong opinions, but she does a great job explaining the nuts and bolts, as well as who is for and against the bill among politicians, online businesses, and marketing organizations.
Analysis By: Ginny Marvin, Marketing Land
The 25 Point Blueprint For Ranking In Google
Simple as apple cake.
Analysis By: Cyrus Shepard, SEOmoz
How To Meltdown Like A Champion On Facebook
This restaurant’s owners did not take criticism from Gordon Ramsay (on Kitchen Nightmares) very well, and the Internet responded to their defensively accordingly. What follows in this BuzzFeed article is an epic Facebook brand meltdown that you probably shouldn’t emulate in any industry.
Analysis By: Ryan Broderick, BuzzFeed
Bing Brands Aren’t Engaged On Google+…
Just because you have a Google+ page doesn’t mean it’s active. That’s the central theme of this Reuters investigation into how some of the biggest brands neglect using Google+ to promote their products. It also highlights how other social networks are capitalizing off of this negligence through offering more freedom and creative opportunities to brand marketers.
Analysis By: Alexei Oreskovic, Reuters
…Except The Ones That Are
Jennifer Slegg offers a counterpoint to the Reuters article mentioned above, and asserts that companies using Google+ have been doing so for a while and clearly receive positive ROI. Otherwise, she argues, they wouldn’t be using it at all.
Analysis By: Jennifer Slegg, Search Engine Watch
Visualizing The Frustration Of A Facebook Interface Update
Everyone loves a good Facebook platform update. Why not make fun of it with a real world example?
Analysis By: Ginny Marvin, Marketing Land
Gold Digging With 16 Advanced Segments
When one of your visitors converts, what content did they consume and how many visits did it take? How do you find “whale” customers, not just the minnows? How can you track down content pirates? Josh Braaten unearths these golden Google Analytics nuggets and more.
Analysis By: Josh Braaten, Search Engine Watch
Social and the Evolution of SEO
SEO is dead. Except that it’s not. Mani Karthik at Search Engine Land writes that the claim “social is taking over search” (whatever that means) is wrong. He argues that search has evolved to incorporate a variety of social signals into algorithms that determine relevance to a query, from likes to more subtle metrics like engagement, and that SEOs need to do the same.
Analysis by: Mani Karthik, Search Engine Land
