This Week’s Industry News
Compiled By Rocket Clicks Staff
Penguin 3.0 Continuing Its Roll Out
As webmasters have reported ranking fluctuations, Google confirmed what many suspected. On Tuesday, Google’s John Mueller stated in a Webmaster Central Hangout that the Penguin 3.0 may continue its roll out indefinitely. Mueller added that he believes this update will just keep updating as Google feels it is necessary.
Source: Search Engine Journal
2014 Cyber Monday E-Commerce Spending Over $2Billion
According to ComScore’s most recent report on e-commerce, online spending for Cyber Monday was the highest it’s ever been in one day. Up 17% from 2013, online spending surpassed $2 billion for desktops alone! E-commerce spend for Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday were also up a significant amount this year, at 32% and 26% respectively. This data helps prove that investing in online advertising during the holidays could really benefit e-commerce retailers.
Source: Marketing Land
Local Search Carousel Added To Bing
Originally only used to display local movie showtimes, it appears Bing has added a local carousel to many local search results. The carousel sits inside a black bar at the top of the search results page, with left and right navigation. If it looks familiar to you, it’s because it is nearly identical to the one Google recently discontinued using in favor of local 3-pack results.
Source: Search Engine Land
Search Trends for 2014 Holiday Weekend
Kenshoo recently released their data on spend and revenue trends for this Thanksgiving week. It was found that retailers increased their search spend by 49% for the week of Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving day say this most significant increase in spend at 49%, while Black Friday and Cyber Monday both saw less than 25% spend increases. For all three of these days revenue increases surpassed spend increases. It was also found that spend for product listing ads in the US nearly doubled year over year.
Source: Search Engine Land
Google May Discount Your Tabbed Content
In a recent webmasters live hangout, Barry Schwartz asked Google’s John Mueller if tabbed or click to expand content on a website will have any issues being indexed or ranked by Google. Mueller said that since Google knows that you are hiding information from users, the content may be “discounted” since it wouldn’t appear by default to users on the page.
Source: Search Engine Roundtable
Yahoo tests Ads without Display URL
A new ad test has been spotted on the Yahoo search results pages. In it Yahoo has excluded several display urls from ads. This test does not come as a surprise since Yahoo has been known to experiment with bold and different approaches to paid search advertising. One such example is their Rich Ads in Search format that help brands by allowing them to include a logo and images with ads. Excluding display urls however could make it harder to recognize a specific brand’s ad.
Source: Search Engine Journal
Updates To Google My Business Guidelines
This week, Google released updates to their guidelines that clarify some previously gray areas. The highlights from the update include: no descriptors of any kind, more specific categories instead of overarching general categories, increased name and category consistency for businesses with multiple locations, and stricter rules for practitioner pages.
Source: Blumenthals Blog
Bing Launches Updates to Campaign Planner
After launching their Campaign Planner earlier this year, Bing has released new updates for this tool. In this tool you will find things like industry and product trend data as well as competitive and seasonal insights. This tool can be found in the Bing Ads Tools menu.
Source: Search Engine Land
Right To Be Forgotten Requests Slowly Coming In To Bing
Bing has started a similar process for Right To Be Forgotten (RTBF) requests, but the response has been significantly slower than what Google received. According to Forget.me, a website helping users file the request, Google has received over 160,000 requests while Bing has only received 699 requests. While Google has been doing it longer, it’s clear from Bing’s first month numbers that users are not as concerned with Bing search results.
Source: Search Engine Land
Programmatic Advertising Now Available for iAd
Late last week, Apple announced that they have brought programmatic ad buying to their mobile ad network by partnering with several tech companies. This form of automatic ad buying will be available across more than 250,000 iOS apps. Partners include MediaMath, The Trade Desk, Rubicon Project, GET IT Mobile and AdRoll among others. This move is one of several in Apple’s attempt to capture market share for in-app advertising. They have also recently launched retargeting and rich media ad formats.
Source: Marketing Land
Google Introduces Update To reCAPTCHA
reCAPTCHA, the service used by Google to protect websites from spam and abuse appears to be giving webmasters an alternative to the annoying distorted text captcha. Now it’s just going to ask you to check a box that says “I’m not a robot.” If reCAPTCHA’s risk analysis engine is unable to confidently predict whether the user is a human or a bot, a traditional captcha will still be required. Google’s online security blog has more information on how to add it to your website.
Source: Google Online Security Blog
Twitter Launches Free App Install Tracking
This week Twitter announced the launch of Answers; an addition to Twitters developer platform that allows advertisers to see app install data for free. This is huge for marketers big on Twitter app advertising because previously this data was only available through a Twitter ad tech partners. One downfall to Answers is that it will only show data for app installs made from Twitter, any cross platform data will only be available through ad tech partners.
Source: Marketing Land
Notable Commentary
Penguin & Panda Era May Be Coming To An End
Aaron Friedman of Search Engine Land recently wrote an article describing what he believes to be the end of an era. Major algorithm updates used to really throw Webmaster’s off with big upswings and down swings. In this piece, he argues the days of major upsets may be over. He makes his case off of evidence from Penguin 3.0 and predictions for the future.
Analysis by: Aaron Friedman, Search Engine Land
What Affects Display Ad Viewability?
In a recent Google study it was found that ads at the top of the page may not be as viewable as one may think. Ginny Marvin recently posted an article using the study to explain five reasons why this happens.
Analysis: Ginny Marvin, Marketing Land
How Will SEO Adapt Over The Next Decade
The whole “SEO is dead” narrative has plagued the industry for a long time. And while it certainly isn’t dead, Tad Chef of Ahrefs Blog argues that it has begun to stagnate. Chef lays out how SEO will need to adapt over the next decade to remain relevant.
Analysis: Tad Chef, Ahrefs Blog
Gauging Display Ad Effectiveness with Engagement
In the display ad world, the idea that not all clickers are buyers and not all buyers are clickers. Liane Dietrich recently posted an article detailing her views on how consumer engagement time, with display ads is becoming more important than metrics like click through rate of ads.
Analysis: Liane Dietrich, Marketing Land
Don’t Put Too Much Focus On Your Google My Business Page
With the continuing changes to Local Search, many companies and SEOs have put a lot of focus on Google My Business pages. But Andrew Shotland of Search Engine Land says putting too much focus on your Google My Business page could be a mistake. Shotland offers a few areas where your time may be better spent.
Analysis by: Andrew Shotland, Search Engine Land
6 Keyword Match Type Questions Answered
With all the recent match type updates being made on Google, questions on how they really work are being asked with more frequency; even by experienced AdWords professionals. Matt Lawson of Google aims to answer the most common ones in his recent article on Search Engine Land.
Analysis: Matt Lawson, Search Engine Land
