This Week’s Industry News
Compiled by the Rocket Clicks Team
Top Stories
Google Explains How to Safely Shut Down Your Site for a Day
Regardless of the opening hours for their physical office or store counterparts, websites are always “open”. However, Google realizes there are unique circumstances that sometimes call for businesses to temporarily “close” or shut down their websites. In order to avoid negatively impacting your website’s performance in search, Google recommends doing things like blocking cart functionality, returning a 503 Service Unavailable status code, or switching your website off entirely. Source: Google Webmaster Central Blog
Price Extensions Now On All Devices In AdWords
With the launch of price extensions last year, they could only be rolled out on mobile devices. Now, Google has announced that they will be launching price extensions for all devices, including desktop. In addition, with this change, Google state that you can “continue to use your price extension URL, or take advantage of the final mobile URL field to use a separate URL for mobile devices. Source: Search Engine Roundtable
Swipe vs. Scroll: Google Tests Horizontal Cards in Local Finder
Earlier this week, Mike Blumenthal spotted an apparent test in Google’s mobile local finder. This test arranged the business listings in a horizontal card layout that required swiping side to side rather than the familiar vertical list that scrolls up and down. The motivation behind this test isn’t entirely clear, but this layout does make it easier for users to interact with the map. Source: Mike Blumenthal
New Ad Label Does Not Confuse Searchers According to Google
With the recent launch of the new green outlined ad label on paid ads on the search results page, Google has stated that the testing of this change “indicated the color change had no bearing on consumers’ ability to distinguish ads from the organic listings on the page.” Well, a poll ran by Barry Schwartz on Twitter found that 46% of users thought Google was trying to make their ads less noticeable, while an additional 13% found that Google was simply bored and wanted a change. Source: Search Engine Roundtable
Google Releases New Page Speed Benchmarks
Continuing its quest to make the internet a better place for users, Google recently released benchmarks for page speed based on its analysis of around 900,000 mobile landing pages. While the conclusion of the study is unsurprising (no one likes waiting 20 seconds for a page to load), the data it provided will give webmasters concrete targets to aim for when making improvements. Source: Think with Google
Additional Commentary
The Power of Great Ad Copy
Jacob Baadsgaard asks us one simple question: should you brother rewriting your ads? The answer is obviously yes, but what can choosing the perfect messaging do for you? The author first notes that it makes people feel something since they typically don’t by for logical reasons, they buy for emotional reasons. Great ad copy also helps them pass this logic gut-check, because purely emotional decisions can often end badly. They’ll want to feel like they are making a logical when they convert and if you set off their logical alarms, they’ll be less likely to click on your ad. Source: Jacob Baadsgaard, Search Engine Land
5 Ways You Can Improve Your New Business’s Visibility on Google Maps
In this guest post for Search Engine Land, Wesley Young reveals his 5-step action plan for shining the spotlight on your business in Google Maps. Young encourages business owners to start by claiming important third-party listings (read: citation building) and ensuring the information listed is accurate. He then suggests prioritizing content creation through frequent posts on Facebook as well as location-specific copy on your website. Finally, Young recommends that you “make it easy for local media to write about your business” and look for opportunities for other niche and locally relevant citations by analyzing competitor backlinks. Source: Wesley Young, Search Engine Land
