This Week’s Industry News
Compiled by the Rocket Clicks Team
Top Stories
Google Lens is Now Live for Pixel Users
Pixel users can now experience Google Lens in the US, UK, Australia, Canada, India and Singapore. Google Lens is a feature on Pixel smartphones that allow users to scan objects for additional information. Google Assistant is used jointly with Lens to scan barcodes, packaging labels, famous artwork, books, buildings, business cards and other objects. The new feature in visual search is impressive but there are still bugs to be fixed. The Lens has a tougher time identifying buildings and objects with no label, but we can expect that Google will continue to invest into it in hopes of it being an alternative to traditional mobile and voice search in the future. Source: Search Engine Land
AdWords Updates Customer Match Targeting
A new update to customer match targeting allows businesses to target known customers via AdWords by uploading phone numbers and mailing addresses. This gives marketers a chance to utilize customer match that may not have large sets of email addresses to work with. To upload phone or mailing lists, you need to navigate to the shared library only in the AdWords API or new AdWords interface. Source: Search Engine Land
Google Search Console Beta to Include Over 12 Months of Data
Webmasters invited to test the new Google Search Console beta can officially confirm beta will include over 12 months of data. The new date range options now include 3 months of data, 6 months, 12 months or full duration. It isn’t clear how long “full duration” will expand to. It also isn’t clear to when Google will officially open the Beta to the public, but John Mueller of Google stated that their plan is early next year. Until then, users will be invited into the new beta as Google recently expanded their invite list. Source: Search Engine Roundtable
New Quick Links in AdWords Change History
A subtle change that can now be found in AdWord’s change history are new links to jump directly to the campaigns/ad groups in your account. Though it’s a small change, it’s most certainly a welcome one from a usability and navigation standpoint. Source: Search Engine Roundtable
New Google Flights Feature
Planning for your next trip just got easier with Google’s new flight and hotel search features. Google Flights uses machine learning and statistical analysis of historical flights data to provide users with the most useful information. The new features include price tracking for both hotels and flights and includes “tips” right below that give travel insights to users. The travel tips can give users intel on when the best time to buy a flight or if certain dates for hotel stays will sell out. Source: Official Google Blog
Analysis
Don’t Use First Page Estimates For Your Bids
Sean Quadlin at PPC Hero thinks you should stop using AdWords first page bid estimates to help guide your bidding decisions. Quadlin’s view of these estimates was forever changed when Google recommended increasing his bid from $17 to $100 even though his ads already sat in the 2.2 position with a CPC of only $7.11. He thought this was a glitch in the matrix that cannot be ignored since it can be calculated based on quality score and competition, even though the estimated first page bid is directly influences competition itself. Quadlin’s final piece of advice is to use the first page bid estimator as more of a recommendation and not to automate the process in general by matching those first page bids. Source: Sean Quadlin, PPC Hero
Some Not So Best Local SEO Practices
Miriam Ellis of Moz let us in on common practices that may actually hurt your local listing and ways to avoid these not so best practices. Her first pro tip is to avoid adding “virtual” address, P.O Boxes or employee home addresses to GMB listings. Its better to have one page for the central office or designate one service area. The second mistake local businesses make is sharing phone numbers between multiple entities. Google guidelines state that users should provide one phone number per business location that serves one website to avoid confusion for both users and Google. Lastly, Ellis reminds us that keyword stuffing has always been a blatant violation of Google guidelines, so don’t do it in your GMB listing either. This should seem obvious but the GMB listing should reflect the actual business name so avoid any unnecessary information such as cities, or services in the name on the listing. Source: Miriam Ellis, Moz
