This Week’s Industry News
Compiled by the Rocket Clicks Team
Top Stories
Twitter Announces Character Limit Change
This week Twitter announced they will double the current character limit to 280 characters. In the official announcement, Twitter indicated that new change is an effort to get people to tweet more while giving them enough room to complete their thought. This update is currently being tested on a small scale, but Twitter intends to roll it out to everyone if the testing goes well. Source: Search Engine Journal; Twitter Blog
Apple’s iOS11 Blocks Ads that Follow Users
With the launch the newest version of Apple’s operating system, a new feature has been included that is activated by default in the Safari web browser. This same tracking prevention system will arrive on Apple’s computers on September 25th. Several major advertisers have already expressed their deep concern over this change, stating Apple is “disrupting the valuable digital advertising ecosystem that funds much of today’s digital content and services.” Source: The Guardian
Bug Kills Google’s Sitelinks Seachbox
The on page search box that Google occasionally displays within a search result snippet has been removed. The search box allowed searchers to restrict a second search to pages within the site listed. Google announced this change was the result of a bug that they are trying to fix, but have not given a timeline for the fix. Source: Search Engine Land
Users Can Now Report Ads for “Knowing Too Much”
Google has added a feature to their muting tool built into their third party display ads that lets users report ads for “knowing too much”. Because the ads are targeted based on a user’s browsing history, perceived interests, or personal account information users may begin to find this high level of targeting to be on the creepy side and choose to report the ad for just that. Google will then reportedly use this feedback to avoid showing users the same ad again across any device or browser where a user has signed in with their Google account. Source: Mashable
Apple Switches SIRI Search from Bing to Google
SIRI Search has switched to Google for its search engine with results being commonly displayed in sets of 5 that display the title, description snippet and URL while ads and the more dynamic parts of Google search such as knowledge panels and featured snippets are stripped away. What does Apple’s switch to Google for SIRI Search mean for clients and traffic? Both Google and Apple are habitually quiet about why they do these things so only time will tell how the change will affect overall search. Source: Local SEO Guide
Analysis
Ad Creation Methods You Can Test Today
Mark Ferree of PPC Hero wants to help you make your ad creation a little more advanced and has a few suggestions to help you do so. If you haven’t tried If Function ads, these will help you display a message only if certain conditions are met which can be based on device or audience. The author also recommends testing out Ad Customizers which can allow you to show product specific information based on parameters you set within the ad that are pulled from a product spreadsheet. This allows you to show customer targeted ad copy by displaying dynamic product details. Source: Mark Ferree, PPC Hero
Is the Web Beginning to Like Bing?
A recent article by Jessie Moore at Search Engine Watch had the task of looking at the differences between Bing and Google to if and where Bing is outperforming Google and found five things that Bing is doing better than Google. Image and video search were the first two that have historically been more searcher friendly. Bing also excels at social media integration, which is a given due to the partnership between Microsoft and Facebook and Twitter. This integration makes the SERP pages a bit less cluttered for a better visual design and finally Bing gives away free stuff with the Microsoft Rewards program. Source: Jessie Moore, Search Engine Watch
