This Week’s Industry News
Compiled By Rocket Click’s Staff
Google’s Carousel Remains Unpredictable
The Google Local Carousel has been out for about a year and SEO strategists have yet to figure out exactly how to control the images shown. Google has updated the feature several times, mostly effecting businesses and restaurants. Search Engine Land has several tips to fight the unpredictable nature of the carousel to protect your brand. The most obvious one, only upload photos that are carousel worthy.
Source: Search Engine Land
Twitter Signs Big Mobile Advertising Deal
Twitter and Omnicom Media Group have reached a deal worth a reported $230 million over the next two years. The deal focuses on integrating Omnicom’s ad buying unit with Twitter’s MoPub ad exchange. The deal will also allow Omnicom a first look at new ad opportunities developed by Twitter.
Source: Marketing Land
Google Releases Page Rendering Tool
The tool is an extension of the Fetch as Google tool in Webmaster Tools. To use the tool webmasters can submit a URL and you will then see how Googlebot renders a particular page. Googlebot will attempt to fetch external files as well, such as images, CSS, and JavaScript. It is recommended to use this test when diagnosing a page with poor SERP performance.
Source: Web Pro News
Google Announces Roll-Up Reports
The new Roll-Up Reporting tool allows you to view executive=level business data from multiple apps and websites within one interface. It can also be used to view a customer’s journey across multiple sites and apps. No tagging changes are needed to begin taking advantage of the new Roll-Up Reports.
Source: Marketing Land
Flurry Five-Year Report: It’s an App World
Flurry analytics has released a five year report on the usage of mobile apps. They have found that of 1 billion active smart devices used, 80 percent of time spent on these mobile devices is in apps and 20 percent on the mobile web. Of this 80 percent, 20 percent of people’s time is spent in Facebook and 32 percent in games. These findings have only served to further support the trends of increasing mobile ad spend.
Source: Flurry Analytics
Google Testing Knowledge Graph Results in Ads
Earlier this year, Google introduced pop-ups with knowledge graph information in organic search results for certain sites. Now they have stated testing similar results in ads. The addition to the ad is presented as a link that also drops down to display content that would normally be displayed in the Knowledge Graph. This test is only being done on sites that meet certain criteria.
Source: Search Engine Land
Priceline.com Sites Dominate AdWords Traffic for Travel in 2013
It has been reported in AdGooroo’s annual review of AdWords activity that travel advertisers spent three quarters of a billion dollars on AdWords. Booking.com; owned by Priceline, alone captured more impressions than any other travel advertiser with 793 million. Other insights include Expedia being the travel industry’s top spender with its brand term “expedia” bringing in the most clicks so far in 2014. It is evident that this is a highly competitive space on AdWords, and will likely only continue to get more competitive.
Source: Search Engine Land
Webmaster Forums Being Shut Down By Bing
By early June, Bing will be shutting down their Webmaster Forums in order to focus time and resources on other directions. According to Duane Forrester, general questions will still be answered via Bing’s Help & How To section. For more complex topics, the Webmaster Blog will still be a good resource for webmasters.
Source: Search Engine Land
Panda 4.0 Hurt 80% of eBay’s Best Search Results
Some websites were hit by the Panda 4.0 update more than others but it appears the company that took the biggest hit was eBay. EBay is Google’s second largest customer for their product listing ads and it is unknown what Google’s motivation was, if any, for the penalty. Other businesses that took an SEO hit include ask.com, Biography.com, and Retail Me Not.
Source: The Wire
SEO Firm Being Sued By Client For Google Violations
A Michigan law firm is suing Rainmaker Institute, their former SEO provider for knowingly using “spammy” techniques that violated Google guidelines. They are accused of building link farms for the law firm’s various legal domains. The full criminal complaint and interesting questions based on the implications of the case are available on Search Engine Land.
Source: Search Engine Land
Cutts Explains How Google Handles Sites With Two Links To The Same Page
It isn’t uncommon for a webpage to have two links to point to the same page. In Matt Cutts latest video, a user asked how Google handles it and if it passes PageRank the same way. Cutts explained that it would pass PageRank individually, just like all other links on your site. But Cutts said that as of the last time he checked, they only counted anchor text from the first link.
Source: Google Webmasters on YouTube
New JavaScript Debugging Tool Added To Webmaster Tools
Google is adding a tool that will allow webmasters to debug their site’s JavaScript problems. The tool will show you if Google is having trouble crawling or indexing your site because of something JavaScript related. Search Engine Land has highlighted some of the common issues this tool would be able to catch.
Source: Search Engine Land
Notable Commentary
Google’s Recirculation Gap Explains
If you’ve ever wondered why Google sends more traffic than its actual market share would suggest, it is likely due to “The Recirculation Gap.” Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land explains that Google re-circulates searches back into itself less than other search engines. Most reports on market share are reporting on searches before clicks take place and analytics reports after the click. As a result, Sullivan says there is a gap in the metrics.
Analysis by: Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land
Mobile Expected To Mature, Not Grow
Marketing Land’s Andrew Waber analyzes how in 2014, the bulk of mobile growth has already arrived and that we shouldn’t expect dramatic growth anymore. Instead, the mobile landscape is expected to “mature.” By this, he suggests that short-term shifts will be less dramatic and overall mobile changes are expected to be more subtle and easier to adapt to.
Analysis by: Andrew Waber, Marketing Land
Facebook Announces New Shazam-like Feature
Facebook’s latest iOS and Android app update will include an audio recognition feature that will help users not only identify a song, similar to Shazam, but also movies and television shows. If Facebook can recognize the audio, it will recommend a tag that you can use for your Facebook post. It is expected that Facebook will use this data for targeting and advertising down the road.
Analysis by: Martin Beck, Marketing Land
Mary Meeker Releases New Internet Trend Report
Mary Meeker revealed the findings of her latest report at last week’s Code Conference. Among the biggest findings were the big shifts in social, on-demand, and personalized TV viewing as well as her optimism on online advertising opportunities. Liz Gannes, of Re/code, has posted the full slideshow and her biggest takeaways.
Analysis by: Liz Gannes, Re/code
Switch to Shopping Campaigns Improve KPIs
Ginny Marvin from Search Engine Land has recently presented some insights on the switch to Google Shopping Campaigns. She reports that making the switch alone increased advertisers revenue by 33.78 percent and return on ad spend increased 25 percent. She also discusses how the new features help advertisers to make the most of optimizations.
Analysis: Ginny Marvin, Search Engine Land
Profit-Driven Marketers Are Setting a New Standard for Performance
In Google’s recently posted blog post, Matt Lawson analyses the potential increase in profit an advertiser could have by increasing their bids. He describes how a bid increase can also increase profit by bringing in more conversions. He also states that although there may be an increase in cost per conversion, the increase in total profit may be worth it.
Analysis: Matt Lawson, AdWords Blogspot
