This Week’s Industry News
Compiled by the Rocket Clicks Team
Top Stories
Instagram Changes
Instagram is preparing to let you add “Music stickers” to your Stories. They are also testing a way to automatically detect a song you’re listening to and display the artist and song title as a visual label. These music tags are already in the code for their stories but Instagram has not commented on when they will be released. Also, a number of third-party apps, including Fandango, GrubHub and Yelp Reservations, have given access to “action buttons” that let users make reservations, purchase tickets, start a restaurant order or book a service without leaving the app. For businesses, quick replies will be tested in the coming weeks, giving them the ability to craft messages that can be sent in response to commonly asked questions. Source: Marketing Land
Bing Ads Updates AdWords Campaign Import Feature
New capabilities have recently been added to Bing Ad’s Google campaign import with Bing Ads now having the capacity to import up to 10 thousand campaigns, 1 million ad groups, 5 million keywords, or 4 million ads from Google. In addition, age targeting, gender targeting, and negative keyword lists can now also be imported. Users will now also be able to access Bing Ads’ advanced import options, which includes the ability to choose specific extensions or setting to import, disable status updates, pause newly imported campaigns, and keep campaign names unchanged if they are different from Google. These options can be accessed by selecting “Show Advanced Options” when going through the Google Import feature in Bing Ads. Source: Search Engine Journal
New Google Maps Features
Google Maps announced a set of new features including a redesigned Explore tab that shows recommendations for top trending activities, centralized around the area you’re currently looking at in Maps. A new Match Score show you a score for food and drink venues according to how likely you are to enjoy them. Additional Group Planning allows you to add places to shareable lists, which users can also add to and vote on. And the new “For you” tab features places you may want to try in the areas that you frequent regularly. Google is also combining Google’s Street View and Maps data with a live feed from your phone’s camera to overlay AR walking directions. These features will launch later this summer. Source: Search Engine Land
Google Shutting Down Non-Spending Accounts This Month
Starting in mid-May, Google will be deactivating AdWords accounts with no recent ad spend. While this was initially announced for March, Google extended the deadline to May without revealing why. This deactivation will affect AdWords accounts that have not seen any spend within the past 15 months. Users can avoid this by paying to run ads again, or by waiting until their account gets deactivated and simply reactivating it for free. But, if there is still no ad spend within 3 months following reactivation, the account will then be deactivated. Source: Search Engine Journal
Submitting Questions Manually to Google
Google has confirmed it is testing a new feature that asks searchers to submit a more detailed question directly in the search box results. This surfaces when Google thinks the searcher is not finding what they are looking for. Google says it will pass the question to content creators who may be able to publish articles to better answer these questions. Google also said they will not share any information with third parties beyond the actual text of the question typed by the user in the box provided. The next time a user may search for that question, they may find a new page with the answer. Source: Search Engine Land
Analysis
Basics of the New Bing Ads Audience Network
Bri Saxman covers the basics of Bing’s recently announced Audience Network which is a new AI-powered audience marketing solution that offers advanced audience targeting to help businesses connect to users that matter to them. The author lists the top reasons to use Audience Ads including: additional volume, more high quality clicks, increased conversions, easy performance tracking, and boosted AI-powered performance. Audience Ads will support both image-based and feed-based variations of responsive ads, both of which will automatically adjust based on the size and shape of native ad formats. The Audience Network is powered by the Microsoft Graph which leverages both search and web activity in addition to demographic information to create highly relevant datasets – this is then combined with machine learning to connect businesses with their most relevant consumers. Source: Bri Saxman, PPC Hero
Image Search SEO Tips
Google has updated their Image Publishing Guidelines to provide useful image search SEO tips. Google suggests making sure that your visual content is relevant to the topic of the page. Place images near relevant text and consider placing the most important images near the top of the page when it makes sense. Avoid embedding text in images like headings and menu items.
The text surrounding the image will be picked up by Google to help them understand what the image is about. Google also uses the file path and the file name of images in order to better understand and rank them. If you include structured data and mobile friendly images, Google can display them as rich results. Source: Search Engine Journal
