This Week’s Industry News
Compiled by the Rocket Clicks Team
Top Stories
Google Soliciting Data for Maps in Organic Search Results
A user in Germany noticed a strange feature while doing a non-local based search. The Google search results page also displayed a map with an unmarked pin. Below the map, Google asked the searcher if they knew what was located at the indicated pin. While it makes sense for Google to reach out to searchers regarding their neighborhood, the implementation is a bit awkward in a non-local search. Source: TheSEMPost
Google Compressing Display Ads
In an effort to improve page load times, Google has begun to compress their display ads by up to 40%. Google’s Brotli compression algorithm, which was introduced around two years ago, will be used in this process. Experts have been guessing that this is just another step by google to improve the quality of online ads as a whole. Source: Search Engine Journal
Repetitive URL Path Elements May Affect Indexation
During a Google Webmaster Help thread this week, John Mueller informed webmasters that Google may decide to “skip URLs that repeat the same path element many times.” When Google encounters these repetitive elements are replaced with underscore placeholders and could skip them when indexing the site. Source: SEO Round Table
Google For Jobs Goes Live
During Google’s I/O conference earlier this year, Google For Jobs was unveiled. This new feature will take the learning capabilities of Google and pairs it with the wide range of job matching sites to help searchers find their perfect match. Non-branded job search queries should surface Google For Jobs results on desktop and mobile. To get a job listed you can list it on one of the partnering job sites or by following Googles direct integration guide. Source: Search Engine Journal
Additional Commentary
Custom Affinity Audience Strategies
Joe Martinez wants to help you be more strategic with your investment into Custom Affinity audiences. In Martinez’s example, he works for a hypothetical company that sells golf clubs. With this in mind, he recommends testing competitor names and URL’s, where he used callawayholf.com as an example affinity. Martinez also suggested targeting industry publications like golfdigest or golfweek as custom affinities. In addition to that, the author found that targeting industry trade shows and conventions in his hypothetical Custom Affinity campaign because if people are willing to pay a fee to enter a building to look at these products, they are likely a relevant audience you would want to be in front of. Source: Joe Martinez, PPC Hero
How the Web is Changing Review Behavior
A recent survey by Get Five Stars revealed that consumer behavior regarding reviews has been shifting over the last three years. Since 2014 there has been a nearly 30% decrease in users who say they never leave reviews and 25-34 year olds are leading the review trend with those over 65 closely behind. Businesses such as restaurants and hotels are still getting most these new reviews, while other service industries have a more difficult time getting reviews. Source: Mike Blumenthal, Get Five Stars
