This Week’s Industry News
Compiled By Rocket Clicks Staff
Webmaster Tools Launches New Robots.txt Tester
The new robots.txt testing tool will now highlight errors in your robots.txt file that may be preventing Google from properly crawling parts of your website. Another feature will allow you to review previous versions of your robots.txt file so that you can see when issues that disrupted crawling may have occurred. To start using the tool, open it up under the Crawl section of Google Webmaster Tools.
Source: Search Engine Watch
French Blogger Fined Due To Negative Restaurant Review
The French Court has fined a blogger and ordered her to change the title of her post because her restaurant review ranked too high in search results, causing harm to the business the review was about. The bloggers large internet following is the primary reason the blog ranked fourth for Google searches for the restaurant. The ruling ordered her to remove the restaurant name from her post but the blogger instead decided to delete the post all together.
Source: Search Engine Land
Google Launches AdWords Express App
Earlier this week Google launched an app version of their AdWords Express platform. The app is available for Android and iOS devices and has newer, more flexible targeting features for advertisers.
Source: Search Engine Land
Facebook Ads Manager Now Available for Mobile
Following Google’s lead, Facebook has released mobile access to their Ads Manager platform through their Android and iOS apps. Advertisers will be able to set campaign statuses, edit budgets, view insights and more from their phones or tablets. This new feature should be available to all users by the end of summer.
Source: Marketing Land
Google+ Adjusts Name Policy
For years, Google+ required all users to use real names in order to establish a community of real people. Three years later, Google has decided to drop the real name policy and allow users to create accounts with any name. Critics worry this will open up the flood gate to internet trolls. Google’s Chief Architect, Yonathan Zunger promises that Google’s troll-smashing department has gotten very good at their job and it won’t be an issue.
Source: Search Engine Journal
Google Makes Move To Dismiss Android Legal Troubles
Private litigants filed a class action lawsuit claiming Google has a mobile search monopoly due to Mobile Application Distribution Agreements and claiming consumers are forced to pay more for devices because of the agreements. Google’s legal team is motioning to dismiss the case based on arguments that consumers can still use other search apps and replace them as their defaults.
Source: Marketing Land
Bing Adds Bid Suggestions & Keyword Delivery Status Alerts
Bing has added some new features to their Ad platform that should make setting keyword bids a little easier for advertisers. A column with bid suggestions has replaced the old icon dropdown in the keyword tab for easier viewing. An entirely new column option for keyword delivery status has also been added to help advertisers know why a keyword has low traffic.
Source: Search Engine Land
Linking AdWords & Google My Business Accounts is Now Possible
Google has recently announced that AdWords users will now be able to enhance geographic targeting by linking their My Business account to their AdWords campaigns. This will ensure that advertisers are showing the most updated location information in ads. This in combination with more refined location bid modifications will allow users to make campaigns even more efficient.
Source: Search Engine Watch
Bing Plans To Expand Academic Search
This fall, Bing users will have access to even more information from the academic community that will be easily accessible from Bing’s search pages. Unlike Google and other search engines, Bing will not treat scholarly information differently via a separate search engine. Bing hopes to make their academic search the best research assistant for their search community.
Source: Search Engine Land
Google Will Warn Users If A Page May Not Work On Their Device
Effective immediately, users could start seeing warnings from Google that a particular web site found via search may not load properly on the device the user is using. A common example may be a site that is heavy on Adobe Flash being accessed by an iOS device that doesn’t support Flash content.
Source: Search Engine Journal
Paid Search Spend Increased Year over Year
According to various PPC vendor reports, search spend is up year over year. Some companies say they have increases over 20% in PPC spend driven by increases in click volume and cost per click. Another interesting thing reported was that smartphones surpassed tablets in click increases according to Covario. Google releases their quarterly earnings report later in the summer, so we will see how these numbers match up.
Source: Marketing Land
Google Launches New Features With Translations, Calendar, And More
A handful of improvements are coming to Google’s search results page. First, a new calendar feature will allow those logged in with a Google account to schedule appointments or events from the knowledge graph. Improvements have been made to Google’s translation tools that make editing searches, changing languages, and hearing the translations easier. Bitcoin users will now be able to perform conversion searches in the same way Google converts other currencies. Finally, Google expanded zip code matches in the knowledge graph. A full list of zip codes for a city will show up in the knowledge graph when a user searches a city name followed by “zip codes.”
Source: Search Engine Land (calendar, translation, Bitcoin, zip codes)
Notable Commentary
Facebook Ads Telling a Brand Story Outperform Traditional Ads
In a new study conducted by Adaptly, it was found that ads served in sequence to tell a brand story generated 56% more conversions than traditional ads that push purchases. In the study a campaign with ads designed to be take customers through the entire funnel with a series of three ads, while the opposing campaign contained more traditional strong call to action ads.
Analysis; Ginny Marvin, Marketing Land
Why Losing Money on PPC is a Good Idea
David Melamed has recently shared an article explaining why PPC managers should sacrifice a little ad spend to find what will work best in an account. He gives examples of why making an unprofitable campaign profitiable is easier than making a profitable campaign more profitable.
Analysis: David Melamed, DavidMelamed.com
Google Axes Authorship Icons
It’s well known now that Google is removing author icons from its search results. Chris Silver Smith of Search Engine Land explains how the loss of authorship will impact the organic search landscape.
Analysis by: Chris Silver Smith, Search Engine Land
6 Steps To A PPC Audit
In Cristina Colon’s recent article on B2Ccommunity.com discusses how business owners can audit their PPC campaigns in 6 easy ways. She covers everything from campaign structure to extensions and briefly explains why each are important.
Analysis, Cristina Colon, B2CCommunity.com
The Impact Of Changing Your Links Anchor Text To Google
How does changing an existing link’s impact its authority in the eyes of Google? While there’s no official word from Google on the subject, many have speculated that changing the anchor text of an inbound link reduces its value in Google’s eyes. The truth is probably more nuanced, with what your changing that link’s anchor text to and from and why all being important factors.
Analysis by: Eric Ward, Search Engine Land
