This Week’s Industry News
Compiled By Rocket Clicks Staff
Analytics ‘Traffic Sources’ Now ‘Acquisition’
The Google Analytics user interface got its first major update in many moons, with the all-important ‘Traffic Sources’ section now labeled ‘Acquisition’. Along with the change in semantics come new functionalities, including an interactive visual grouping of traffic by “channel” (a.k.a “medium”) with bar graphs. Paid and organic search traffic details can now be found under “Keywords”. Luckily webmasters haven’t lost any data with the changes, but they’ll have to get used to looking for their favorite dashboards in slightly different places.
Source: Search Engine Journal
In Stock Nearby!
AdWords recently added a feature that allows advertisers to let searchers know when a product they’re looking for is available at a local store. The new addition to Product Listing Ads (PLAs) is available to brick-and-mortar retailers who update product availability listings through the Google Merchant Center.
Source: AdWords Blog
Facebook Introduces Objective-Based Campaigns
Over the coming weeks, Facebook advertisers will see new options when creating a campaign via the Ad Create tool, Power Editor and API. Instead of the old starting point of selecting an ad type, advertisers will be presented with a menu of campaign objectives such as “Clicks To Website”, “Website Conversions” or “Page Likes”. After setting up the campaign, reports will highlight the metrics that are most applicable to the campaign objective.
Source: Search Engine Journal
TV Watching Now Easier Than Ever (Phew!)
If you thought Google’s Knowledge Graph already showed up for every possible informational search query, think again. Google just announced that they have added TV episodes to the ubiquitous Knowledge Graph results, complete with Air Date information for each episode.
Source: Search Engine Roundtable
Pinterest ‘Promoted Pin’ Ads Debut
Pinterest has joined the bandwagon of advertising and added promoted pins to its site. Pinterest plans to proceed cautiously and roll out the update to only a select number of businesses. Promoted pins can be seen on both the web and mobile, and they are served based on contextual relevancy.
Source: Marketing Land
Twitter Gets Its Strongest TV Tie-Up So Far With Comcast Deal
Aiming to turn the social network into a TV-watching service, Twitter makes a deal with Comcast. Later this fall users will start to see a “See It” button on messages about some of Comcast-owned NBC Universal shows like “The Voice”. Users will be able to see more information about the shows,plus other features include the ability to record or watch shows directly from computers or mobile devices.
Source: All Things Digital
The Truth About Original Content
Google has always stressed the importance of original and unique content for ranking well in the SERPs and providing value to your visitors. But what about when you sell something that everyone else sells and use the same product descriptions they do? It’s long been a bit of a gray area, and Google’s Jon Mueller shed light on the issue recently in a Google Webmaster Hangout. The answer: In these cases Google won’t look into the ownership of the content. At least that’s what John said.
Source: SEO Roundtable
Nielsen Now Has Twitter TV Ratings
It’s well known that Twitter and TV go hand-in-hand. Case in point: There were more than 1.2 million tweets about Breaking Bad during the week of Sept. 23. Now Nielsen is using that relationship to gauge the popularity of TV shows with its new Twitter TV rankings. It remains to be seen if TV networks will really take this new ranking system seriously, as Twitter data can match up fairly well with traditional viewership numbers for some shows and not for others.
Source: Mashable
Bing Places Now In UK, Canada
Bing Places finally expanded its reach outside the borders of the US when it was made available in Canada and the UK earlier this week.
Source: Search Engine Land
Digital Ad Revenue Tops 20 Billion In First Half Of 2013
The Interactive Advertising Bureau recently reported digital ad revenue numbers for the first half of 2013. Total digital ad revenue was just under $20.1 billion, up from the $17 billion it generated over the same period last year. Mobile accounted for 15 percent of that total. Search revenues in particular were up 7 percent from last year, but down in terms of total percentage of revenue due to the rise of mobile.
Source: Search Engine Land
Google Tweaks Algorithm To Limit Mug Shots
We’ve all seen the Knowledge Graph results that prominently feature the mug shots of celebrities, but If you’ve had an unfortunate run-in with law the bevy of mug shot websites online make it easy to see yours, too. Google announced that it is going to tweak its algorithm to limit these results — good news for criminals everywhere but bad news in the minds of some free speech advocates.
Source: Search Engine Watch
Same Day Delivery Services Expanding
During the dot-com bubble, a load of start-ups began offering rapid delivery of everything from a bag of groceries to a television. And while most of those services failed, the market for rapid same day delivery has begun to heat up again, with Amazon, Google and eBay all expanding their same day service offerings. It’s a business model many feel is still doomed to fail. But for giants like Amazon and Google, who can afford the loss of money, it’s more about collecting information on potential customers.
Source: The Verge
Notable Commentary
That Doesn’t Strangle ROI
So, You’ve Been Penalized By Google
Having had a lot of experience removing his own website and others from the Penguin penalty box, Lewis Sellers shares a step-by-step list of best practices and tools to make a tedious job at least somewhat easier.
Analysis by: Lewis Sellers, Moz
How To Create Influential Content
Candra French, a Savannah, Georgia-based content creation specialist, has a great post on how to make your content not just unique, but influential. The article currently has 8 tips, with more to come.
Analysis by: Candra French, The Media Blueprint
The Death Of The Pageview
As advertisers seek more than just a click or a pageview, publishers are being forced to search for new ways to engage visitors as well as monetize that engagement. Check out Josh Sternberg’s analysis of this growing trend, and make sure to click through to Pitchfork’s piece on Daft Punk if you haven’t seen it yet.
Analysis by: Josh Sternberg, Digiday
Think AdWords Doesn’t Work? Here’s What You’re Doing Wrong
After analyzing 500 small- to medium-sized businesses, Larry Kim from Search Engine Journal breaks down the top five things advertisers are doing wrong when working with AdWords. Thankfully, he also explains how these common mistakes can be avoided.
Analysis by: Larry Kim, Search Engine Journal
Debate: Do Single-Product PLA Ad Groups Strangle ROI?
A recent paper written about CPC strategy challenges the benefits of using a single product PLA ad group strategy. Although testing revealed that in most cases traffic and revenue fell when a company switched to a single product PLA structure for all products, it is still recommended to create them for top performing products.
Analysis by: Ginny Marvin, Search Engine Land
A Visual Guide To Google Search Results
Moz offers a visual guide detailing the wide variety of ways Google is now delivering search results.
Analysis by: Dr. Pete, Moz
7 Milestones In Google Search
On the eve of Google’s 15th anniversary, Search Engine Land breaks down the 7 most important developments in Google search. It’s hard to remember a time when some of these features, like image search, didn’t exist.
Analysis by: John Dreller, Search Engine Land
Understanding The Future Of Entity Search
Paul Bruemmer of Search Engine Land attempts to demystify the future of Google’s entity search.
Analysis by: Paul Bruemmer, Search Engine Land
The Rise Of Amazon And Founder Jeff Bezos
Business Week offers up a long and fascinating narrative on the rise of Amazon, its corporate culture and the streamlined, no-nonsense management style of CEO Jeff Bezos.
Analysis by: Brad Stone, Business Week
