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Thursday, September 30, 2021
5 ways to maximize your Google Search ad spend performance
As we approach the end of the calendar year, marketers are looking to squeeze every ounce of performance from their paid search campaigns. With this focus comes the risk of wastage or ineffective regional campaigns – all putting 2022 budgets at risk.
Join this session to hear five cutting-edge tactics to improve your spend efficiency. Each section will profile use cases, Adthena data and tips for the audience to apply in their day-to-day.
Register today for “5 Tips to Max your Google Ads Search Spend Efficiency and Grow,“ presented by Integrate.
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Google Ads launches new budget report
Google Ads is launching a new budget report to visualize monthly campaign spend behavior, the company announced Thursday.
What the budget report shows. The budget report shows daily spend, your campaign’s monthly spending limit (solid grey line), your monthly spend forecast (dotted blue line), cost to date (solid blue line) and any budget changes you’ve made during that particular month.
The shaded blue area shows the prediction intervals that indicate the upper and lower bound that the actual aggregate spend will likely land for a given day. Changes to your average daily budget are represented by arrow icons on the days the budget changed and you can hover over the arrows to see the budget changes.
How to access the budget report. To see the budget report, you’ll first need to have a campaign with a date range that includes the current month. The budget report is accessible from the Campaigns page, the shared library and the Ad groups page.
Why we care. This new report can help advertisers understand how editing their budget can impact the campaign’s spending limits, how past changes to average daily budget can affect performance and spend limits, and how much they’re projected to pay at the end of month. That information can then be used to improve their planning.
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Google unveils multimodal search, new SERP features; Thursday’s daily brief
Search Engine Land’s daily brief features daily insights, news, tips, and essential bits of wisdom for today’s search marketer. If you would like to read this before the rest of the internet does, sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox daily.
Good morning, Marketers, Google’s Search On event was yesterday and we’ve covered all the announcements below.
The leading announcement was MUM’s integration with Lens to produce the first instance of multimodal search available to the public (launching in English in the coming months). Although it’s not a complete departure from what we’re used to, being able to snap a photo and add some text is definitely a new way to search.
At the event, Google provided an e-commerce use case for it (more on that below). I’m interested in learning more ways you think these capabilities might benefit businesses. Send me an email at gnguyen@thirddoormedia.com (subject line: A picture and a thousand words), and don’t hold back, these capabilities were unheard of a decade ago, yet here we are.
That’s just one of the many announcements from Search On, keep on scrolling to get caught up on newly announced SERP features, enhancements and more.
George Nguyen,
Editor
MUM brings multimodal search to Lens, deeper understanding of videos and new SERP features
Google announced new applications of its MUM technology, including multimodal search with Google Lens, Related topics in videos and other new search result features, at its Search On event on Wednesday. While these announcements are not an overhaul of how Google Search works, they do provide users with new ways to search and give SEOs new visibility opportunities as well as SERP and search changes to adapt to.
- MUM enhancements to Google Lens (shown above): Google demoed a new way to search that combines MUM technology with Google Lens, enabling users to take a photo and add a query. E-commerce is another potential use case — users can take a picture of a pattern on a shirt and ask Google to find the same pattern on socks, the company provided as an example.
- Related topics in videos: Google is also applying MUM to show related topics that aren’t explicitly mentioned in a video. This will be launching in English in the coming weeks, and the company will add more visual enhancements over the coming months. It will first be available for YouTube videos, but Google is also exploring ways to make this feature available for other videos.
- “Things to know”: This SERP feature lists various aspects of the topic the user searched for — for example, if the query were “acrylic painting,” the searcher might see a step-by-step guide or tips in this section. This feature can enable users to see the different dimensions other people typically search for, which may help them get to the information they’re looking for faster.
- Refine and broaden searches: This set of features act like search suggestions in the SERP, enable users to get more specific with a topic or zoom out to more general topics.
Google search gets larger images, enhances ‘About this result,’ gets more ‘shoppable’ and more
While MUM was the highlight of Google’s Search On event, the company also announced a number of changes to the search results that are important for search marketers to understand. These changes include:
- More visually browsable search results. For queries in which users may want to explore information visually, like “painting ideas,” Google may show a more image-heavy results page. This type of results page may also display for apparel-related queries.
- “About this result” enhancements. Initially launched in February and expanded to include ranking information in July, this transparency feature now includes what the site in question says about themselves (which can be pulled from places like the “About Us” page) and can also show web results about the site, such as what others are saying about it, or related results about the topic.
- Shoppable search. Now, when users browse for apparel on mobile, Google may show a visual feed of related items in various colors and styles, along with other information like style guides, videos or local shops. This feature is powered by the Google Shopping Graph and is currently limited to the U.S.
- Local in-stock filters. Beginning today in English in the U.S., UK, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland, users may see an “in stock” filter that allows them to see if nearby stores have a specific item available on their shelves.
- Shopping with Google Lens. Soon, Google app users on iOS will see a new button that makes all the images on a page searchable via Google Lens. Similar functionality will also be arriving on Chrome for desktop: Users will be able to select images, video or text on a site to see search results in the same tab. Unlike the iOS version of this feature, which is only available in the U.S., Lens in Chrome will be available globally in the coming months.
Why we care. Review these new changes Google has rolled out and will be rolling out. See how you and your clients can leverage some of these changes to generate more business and traffic. The one area of concern is the About this result section having third-party information outside of Wikipedia that may be hard to change if it doesn’t have the most positive or accurate information about your company.
Another record-breaking holiday shopping season? Perhaps not…
Why container shipping delays are a big deal for e-commerce PPC in 2021. “The holidays this year are going to be even more different than last year,” said Fred Vallaeys, CEO at Optmyzr, “The effects of much higher shipping costs are going to be significant and ripple throughout the retail ecosystem.” In his post, Vallaeys breaks down how increased shipping costs will impact what retailers stock, the structure of their PPC campaigns and how customers may adapt.
You wrote an amazing article — here’s why influential people aren’t sharing it. This Twitter thread from SparkToro contains some pointers on why you’re not getting amplified and how you can go about changing that.
Not by design, but still racist. Under the “Safety” section of a People also ask box, Google showed “What percent of Fort Collins is Black?” Google Search Liaison Danny Sullivan explained how this unfortunate coincidence might’ve occurred. I’m not sure if this was a factor, but biased language models can result from internet training data, and it’s on every SEO and user to submit feedback so that the internet can be a place that’s safe for everybody.
What We’re Reading: The case for zero-party data
“When your data request is communicated transparently, 0P data helps build more trusted customer relationships that lead to higher lifetime value and 0P data, unlike some other methods, is free,” wrote John Cosley, senior director, brand marketing at Microsoft Advertising, “Plus, it’s more likely to be compliant and accurate, so incorporating it into your overall data strategy can better protect you as industry regulation evolves.”
With the looming demise of third-party cookies, there’s been an increased emphasis on first-party data, but, as Cosley reminds us, data that customers willingly provide you (zero-party data, or 0P data), is “the digital version of walking into a business and being immediately greeted by staff who ask how they can help you. It’s the main difference of how 0P data delivers a better value exchange over other consented models. The consumer now has skin in the game that forms a connection and directs the conversation.”
Brands can and should use zero-party as part of their larger strategy, which could also include first- and second-party data. One of the points Cosley emphasized was that brands should be mindful of how they’re asking for it: “You’ll find some opportunities immediately and others that will take more time to nurture. It could be off-putting for a person’s first experience with your brand to come with too many potentially personal questions, so gauge your approach accordingly,” he said.
He also shared the following tactics on obtaining your own zero-party data and using it in your advertising:
- Set up Universal Event Tracking (UET) to collect data to measure and tune your ad campaigns.
- Leverage tools like Custom Audiences to deliver personalized messages and offers with UET data.
- Use remarketing to reengage customers and prospects.
- Create look-alike, or Similar Audiences, lists and segments based on signals obtained through the above to provide more personalized ad experiences at greater scale.
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Google Search Console products enhancements report gains more granular errors
Google’s products enhancement report within Google Search Console reporting now has some improvements. The errors are now more granular and give you more actionable errors and notices on what to work on to improve your errors with the product structured data on your pages.
The notice. Google posted this update in the data anomalies help page saying that starting on September 29, 2021 “Search Console now provides more granularity in error reporting for Product structured data items.” “As a result, many issues involving incorrect formatting that were formerly marked as invalid object are now marked more specifically with invalid type or format categories,” Google added.
The product report. Google first added this report to Search Console in February 2019. Google has made improvements to the reports over the years, including this update. If you have product structured data on your site and a verified Search Console property for that site, you can access the report over here on Search Console.
You can learn more about this report over here.
Why we care. If you see a spike or decline in errors on September 29, 2021, it is likely related to this change in how Google shows more granular errors in this report. Review the new revised errors and send them to your developers to resolve. Then check back a week or so later to see if the errors are resolved.
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The top 4 data issues campaign managers face and how to solve them
Data remains one of the most powerful assets in business. Those who know how to leverage it can execute data-driven campaigns with purpose, precision, and laser vision. And those who don’t are likely to have rudderless marketing campaigns that struggle to stay afloat.
The reality is that businesses are amassing more data than ever before. The landscape has changed, and customers today are in a noisy den of marketers, each working tirelessly to grab their attention. To get your message heard above the ear-splitting barrage, your marketing campaigns must be data-driven.
However, being able to dissect and analyze data is complex. It burdens campaign managers with a whole range of challenges that prevent them from harnessing the full potential of key insights. Below we’ll uncover the biggest problems data campaign managers face in today’s digi-sphere, along with solutions to overcome them.
Problem #1: Data analysis is time-consuming
Data has become the lifeblood of many businesses. The desire to extract more has led to marketing teams drowning in it, posing a significant problem – the more data you consume, the more you must analyze.
Having to critique reams of data that are scattered across different platforms is incredibly time-consuming. But this is often made worse by following inefficient processes that are carried out by inexperienced employees, which blights a company’s ability to leverage insights and take advantage of new opportunities. In today’s world, businesses compete in a fast-paced environment where fresh data can become stale very quickly.
Last week’s insights may now be past their sell-by-date, providing you with inaccurate data that will hamper the quality of your decision-making. Data analysis must be efficient to enable companies to pivot between different strategies and capitalize on real-time opportunities. Businesses must be nimble, not cumbersome.
Yet 42% of data workers’ time is being wasted on the analytics process, with 22% of these workers having a lack of understanding of analytics and data science (Alteryx, 2019).
Solution: Hiring specialists who know exactly how to interpret and make sense of analytics is one solution but not always a viable one. As you’d expect, many businesses may not have the budget to recruit data experts.
However, creating processes that can clean and organize data efficiently is an alternative that all businesses can turn to. Investing in software that organizes data in a way that liberates analysts from having to dig for key insights will make analysis more efficient.
Problem #2: Data analysis is expensive
Marketing tools remain the crux of any advanced campaign analytics. They provide the x-ray vision needed to see through the data clutter and measure performance. However, software can be expensive, and with the increasing pressure to provide cutting-edge analysis, even the most hardened of marketing managers will feel a pang of anxiety.
The reality is that many businesses don’t have the budget to invest in state-of-the-art software that can analyze the treasure trove of data they’ve gathered. According to a study by SQream, only 13% of businesses were in a strong financial position when it came to supporting data analytics activities.
To compound things even further, despite 83% of companies stating that they were prepared to manage and analyze data, 87% reported that their budgets weren’t enough to cover their data analytics needs.
Software that’s incapable of producing accurate data analytics will paint a false picture of the landscape you’re competing in. This, of course, has its own perils, which begin from feeding decision-makers with incorrect information and ending with customer-alienation.
Cheaper alternatives, such as excel, also provide simpler solutions that may be beneficial in the short term, but in the long run, may snowball into something more problematic. Managing this sheet requires regular updates to ensure that data is fresh. Then, as the company grows, this might expand to two Excel sheets that somehow need to be linked together. Over time the data becomes so complicated that only one person can make use of them.
Time is wasted. Data becomes disconnected and errors accumulate. Can you see where this is going?
Solution: One way to overcome this is to request an increase in budget by illustrating the ROI of what an analytics system can bring to the company. A clear demonstration of its benefits along with the pitfalls will create a compelling argument that’ll be hard to ignore, especially given that our global spending on big data analytics has reached $2 billion.
Problem #3: Data-fragmentation across platforms
Imagine being at the helm of several marketing campaigns where your team cast the net far and wide to capture fresh data through PPC, SEO, Facebook Ads, and email marketing. After a while, you pull everything back in to analyze the cluster of data silos that come from each campaign.
Keyword rankings, click-through rates, conversions, impressions, backlinks, open rates – everything is very granular. Of course, specificity always trumps ambiguity, but these nuggets of detail don’t provide a single overview of your performance. So, you’re left with scattered shards of data that can’t give you a clear illustration of your overall marketing performance.
This is data fragmentation – and it’s a hazard that hits businesses of all sizes. Marketing managers need to have holistic insights at their fingertips to demonstrate accountability for their marketing budgets, make quick adjustments to their current strategy, and, if need be, pivot to a new one altogether.
Yet, at the heart of the problem is the need to create a coherent and bespoke data schema across all applications. Each application that you leverage uses its own data schema to help visualize your performance.
So if you use Google Ads, Google Analytics, HubSpot, Marketo and ten other applications to manage your digital marketing campaigns, they’ll all use different metric naming conventions as part of their tracking.
The real challenge is to create a consistent target data schema, where everything is stored in one place to allow managers to analyze and develop an understanding of whether their efforts are bringing them closer to their goals.
Failing to find a solution to this problem will force businesses to trudge through the mud until they can make sense of their data, which at this point may already be out of date.
Solution: Data that can be pulled automatically into one place will save you time, minimize errors and allow you to harness the full potential of real-time insights. A simple yet effective solution would be to invest in a powerful marketing dashboard that unifies all data in one location.
Looking into the nuts and bolts of it, managers require three key components for any solution to come to fruition:
- ETL / data integration: to pull data across disparate platforms into one place
- Powerful data-warehouse: to prepare and organize the data that’s been gathered from the first step
- Analysis & visualization: to tell the story behind the numbers and derive actionable insights
Doing so will automate insights and allow you to gain a quick yet comprehensive overview of your campaign performance.
Problem #4: Building and maintaining reporting structures is time-consuming
Marketing reports are snapshots of your business, and they’re indispensable to any firm looking to compete in today’s digital playground. Their insights help to make sense of your data, highlighting what’s working and what isn’t… that is, of course, assuming that all your data is up to date, accurate and includes the appropriate metrics to measure your performance.
The truth is reporting can be a headache for campaign managers. Many companies dread monthly internal reporting because of the time it takes to manually pull and process mountains of data across different platforms into something comprehensible. Being both tedious and error-prone, the entire process can be just as stressful as it is time-consuming. A single misplaced digit will send a ripple of miscalculation throughout the entire report, which will have an overall impact on performance and predictions.
Staff will then have to spend additional time digging through reports to identify and rectify mistakes, forcing other important tasks to be put on hold. Having this occur once is damaging enough but over time will drain company resources and suppress its ability to make progress.
Solution: There’s a ton of software that can do all the heavy lifting for you when it comes to reports. The problem is identifying tools that are cost-effective and competent. Arena Calibrate is one tool that ticks both boxes by being able to pull scattered data silos into one place and provide summaries of your performance across all channels.
Final thoughts
Undoubtedly, data is the latest craze that’s seized the attention of every competitive business on the planet. It’s an asset that can bring just as many problems as benefits to campaign managers who don’t know how to capitalize on it.
However, despite the challenges these obstacles pose, most of them boil down to a lack of organization and inefficient processes. The integration of software along with a more streamlined data analytics approach will make marketing teams agile enough to react to real-time insights. Doing so will enable managers to drive forward accurate and data-led marketing campaigns that can provide them with a competitive advantage.
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Wednesday, September 29, 2021
Best SMX rates expire this Saturday… book now and save!
As platforms, technologies, and user expectations continue to evolve at break-neck pace, opportunities to outperform competitors and capture the greatest return on investment are abundant… provided you know how to proceed.
Attend SMX, online November 9-10, to hear how successful practitioners and brands are already…
- Embracing paid campaign automation
- Driving success in a data-less world
- Preparing for the next Google ranking algorithm update
- Creating a more diverse and inclusive organization
… and much more, all for just $199. (Super Early Bird rates expire at the end of this week! Register now to lock in ultimate savings, no matter your pass type.)
The all-new agenda is live and ready for you to explore!
Programmed by the Search Engine Land experts, this tactic-rich virtual training program features three tracks exploring the latest issues in SEO, PPC, and content, including…
SEO
- Developing a full-funnel content approach with user intent at the heart of it, featuring Jess Peace, Senior Content Producer, NeoMam Studios
- How to rank better in Google Discover, featuring John Shehata, VP, Global Audience Development Strategy & CRM, Conde Nast
PPC
- How to optimize RSAs, the only ad format here to stay, featuring Frederick Vallaeys, Cofounder and CEO, Optmyzr
- Enhance your PPC forecasting skills with advanced modeling in Excel, featuring Emma Franks, Account Based Marketing Manager, TAB Bank
Content
- Entity search is your competitive advantage, featuring Benu Aggarwal, President and Founder, Milestone, INC
- Using data analysis to generate hundreds of new content ideas, featuring Ashley Segura, CoFounder, TopHatContent
…plus a brand-new Career track featuring sessions on:
- Finding and supporting entry-level SEO talent
- Launching effective mentorship programs
- Ensuring diversity and inclusion thrive in your organization
- Climbing the career ladder in a world of automation
You’ll also unlock an exclusive keynote about advancing your search marketing career from Search Engine Land’s Director of Search Content, Carolyn Lyden, Overtime live Q&A with all editorial speakers, interactive clinics on SEO, PPC, and Google Analytics 4, plus live AMAs with winners of the 2021 Search Engine Land Awards.
Remember, Super Early Bird rates expire this Saturday, October 2 — grab your All Access pass now for just $199 or bundle with a live, hands-on workshop for just $299!
Don’t miss your opportunity to learn brand-safe, actionable tactics to overcome the critical search marketing obstacles you’re facing today — and prepare for what’s coming in 2022.
Psst… The more, the merrier at SMX. Attend with your team to unlock up to 20% off registration. Email registration@thirddoormedia.com to receive your personalized group discount code.
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Google search gets larger images, enhances ‘About this result,’ gets more ‘shoppable’ and more
While MUM was the highlight of Google’s Search On event, the company also announced a number of changes to the search results that are important for search marketers to understand. These changes include the launch of larger and more visually browsable search results for some queries, enhancements to the “About this result feature,” a more “shippable” Google search interface, in-person shopping experiences from home and more.
Visual browsing with larger images
Google has rolled out a new, more “visually browsable” interface for some search results pages. You can see them for some searches that contain a keyword plus the term “idea” after it, like [painting ideas] or in the example GIF below, [pour painting ideas]. Google said this interface makes “it easier to visually browse to find what you are looking for.”
This launched earlier this week and I believe Google calls these large image blocks “image universal blocks.” Not only will they appear for idea-related queries but they can also be displayed for apparel queries.
About this result enhancements
Google initially launched the About this result box in February 2021 and then in July added more details like ranking information to the box. Now, Google is showing even more information in the About this result box: The additions include what the source says about themselves, which can be pulled from places like the site’s about us page. Google can also show web results about the site or page, such as what others are saying about the result and also related results about the topic from other sites.
Google told us that you cannot control what information is being shown from the related results or what others are saying about the result. The search engine uses a set of undisclosed queries to find this information and only sites that meet a certain quality bar can show up in those sections of the About this result box. Google said it will keep an eye on abuse or manipulation of these features but currently, there is no way to tell Google if the information in the box is incorrect and should be removed. Technically, you can probably use the submit feedback button but it is unclear how quickly Google can react to such requests.
Currently, Google said the About this result feature has been used over 400 million times, which translates to a small percentage of searchers.
Shoppable search
Google has made the Google search experience more “shoppable” for apparel-related queries. This new experience should make it easier to browse for apparel on mobile right from your search results, the company said. Google’s example is when you search for “cropped jackets,” Google Search will show you a visual feed of jackets in various colors and styles alongside other helpful information like local shops, style guides and videos. Google said this is powered by the Google Shopping Graph, which was announced at Google I/O earlier this year.
In-person shopping at home
Google is adding new in-store inventory in order to make the online at-home shopping experience feel more like shopping in-person at the store. Google said people want to experience in-person shopping from home so now you can filter the results using an “in stock” filter to see if nearby stores have specific items on their shelves.
This is launching in English in the U.S. and select markets, including the UK, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland on September 29th.
Shopping with Google Lens
Soon, Google app users on iOS will see a new button that makes all the images on a page searchable via Google Lens. This feature will be arriving soon, but it is currently planned only for users in the U.S.
Similar functionality will also be arriving on Chrome for desktop: Users will be able to select images, video or text on a site to see search results in the same tab. Unlike the iOS version of this feature, Lens in Chrome will be available globally in the coming months.
More MUM In Google
Google has announced a slew of new features around the expanded use of MUM in Google Search. This includes Google Lens and video search features, plus how Google will use MUM in the new “Things to Know,” refine this search and broaden this search and more. See our article over here for more details.
Why we care
Review these new changes Google has rolled out and will be rolling out. See how you and your clients can leverage some of these changes to generate more business and traffic. The one area of concern is the About this result section having third-party information outside of Wikipedia that may be hard to change if it doesn’t have the most positive or accurate information about your company.
The post Google search gets larger images, enhances ‘About this result,’ gets more ‘shoppable’ and more appeared first on Search Engine Land.
MUM brings multimodal search to Lens, deeper understanding of videos and new SERP features
Google announced new applications of its MUM technology, including multimodal search with Google Lens, Related topics in videos and other new search result features, at its Search On event on Wednesday. While these announcements are not an overhaul of how Google Search works, they do provide users with new ways to search and give SEOs new visibility opportunities as well as SERP and search changes to adapt to.
What is MUM?
Google first previewed its Multitask Unified Model (MUM) at its I/O event in May. Similar to BERT, it’s built on a transformer architecture but is reportedly 1,000 times more powerful and capable of multitasking to connect information for users in new ways.
In its first public application in June, MUM identified 800 variations of COVID vaccine names across 50 languages in a matter of seconds. That application, however, did not show off the technology’s multimodal capabilities. The announcements made at Search On provide a better glimpse at MUM’s multimodal potential.
MUM enhancements to Google Lens
Google demoed a new way to search that combines MUM technology with Google Lens, enabling users to take a photo and add a query.
In the “point-and-ask” example above, a user takes a photo of an unknown bicycle part and asks how to fix it. Google is able to match the search to an exact moment in a video, which helps users find the right information without having to manually research bike parts and then conduct a separate search for a tutorial.
In its announcement, the company provided another potential use case (shown above): Users can take a picture of a pattern on a shirt and ask Google to find the same pattern on socks. While users could simply describe the pattern they’re looking for with text, they may not find the exact pattern or they may have to filter through many results before locating the right one. This capability will be arriving in early 2022, a Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land.
Related topics in videos
Google is also applying MUM to show related topics that aren’t explicitly mentioned in a video.
In the example above, the video does not explicitly say “macaroni penguin’s life story,” but Google’s systems are able to understand that the topics are related and suggest the query to the user. This functionality will be launching in English in the coming weeks, and the company will add more visual enhancements over the coming months. It will first be available for YouTube videos, but Google is also exploring ways to make this feature available for other videos.
Features that will eventually leverage MUM
Google also unveiled some new SERP features that are based on other technologies, but the company expects to improve them with MUM over the coming months.
“Things to know.” This feature lists various aspects of the topic the user searched for. Things to know can enable users to see the different dimensions other people typically search for, which may help them get to the information they’re looking for faster.
In the example above, Google shows aspects of the query (“acrylic painting”) that searchers are likely to look at first, like a step-by-step guide or acrylic painting using household items.
“The information that shows up in Things to know, such as featured snippets, is typically information that users would see by directly issuing a search for that subtopic,” a Google spokesperson said. This feature will also be launching in the coming months.
Refine and broaden searches. The “Refine this search” and “Broaden this search” features enable users to get more specific with a topic or zoom out to more general topics.
Continuing with the “acrylic painting” example from above, the Refine this search section shows suggestions for acrylic painting ideas, courses and so on, while the Broaden this search section shows related, but more general topics, like styles of painting. These features will also launch in English in the coming months.
More announcements from Search On
In addition to the MUM-related announcements above, Google also previewed a more “visually browsable” interface for certain search results pages, enhancements to its About this result box, a more “shoppable” experience for apparel-related queries, in-stock filters for local product searches, as well as the ability to make all images on a page searchable via Google Lens. You can learn more about those features in our concurrent coverage, “Google search gets larger images, enhances ‘About this result,’ gets more ‘shoppable’ and more.”
Why we care
When Google first unveiled MUM, it touted the technology’s multimodal capabilities and power with abstract examples and no rollout dates. Now, we have a better idea of what MUM can actually do and a roadmap of features to expect.
The enhancements to Google Lens are a new, and perhaps more intuitive, way to leverage multimodal search than the industry has seen before. The e-commerce example Google provided shows how this feature may help the search engine become more of a player in that sector while making it even more important for merchants to apply product schema and submit accurate data feeds so that their products can show up on Google.
The other MUM-related announcements (Related topics in videos, Things to know, Refine this search and Broaden this search) are all about enabling users to learn more through related topics. These features may present SEOs with the opportunity to get in front of users by connecting a search to another related search or a video to another related video or search that they’re ranking for.
The interconnectivity of Google’s search results and features may offer new ways for users to arrive at whatever they’re seeking. If Google discloses how someone arrives on a publisher’s content (such as through Refine this search suggestions, for example), this could reveal new user journeys (and the business opportunities that may come with them) to optimize for. These features are also another step further away from the ten blue links of old, and SEOs will have to adapt to the changes while making the most out of the new visibility opportunities these features have to offer.
In addition, these announcements, along with the other Search On announcements (visual browsing with larger images and more shoppable search features) may provide users with new and more intuitive ways to search, which can help the company maintain its position as the market leader.
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Fancy like🕺… why brands should pay attention to TikTok
Search Engine Land’s daily brief features daily insights, news, tips, and essential bits of wisdom for today’s search marketer. If you would like to read this before the rest of the internet does, sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox daily.
Good morning, Marketers, how do you feel about TikTok?
We’ve had the discussion internally with the Search Engine Land editorial team, and I’ve let everyone know I’m a fan. I absolutely love the platform and the creative that comes out of it. Other apps have tried to replicate it (see: Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube), but none have captured the pizzazz of TikTok. Maybe it’s the demographic. Only we olds are stuck using Facebook and Instagram.
The company recently announced that it surpassed one billion monthly users, so it’s a huge opportunity for advertisers, especially those targeting that younger audience. But it’s one that we have to get really right to succeed.
But sometimes TikTok creators are the leaders here and brands take the cue. I recently read an article in Esquire about how the “Fancy Like” TikTok trend was co-opted by Applebee’s marketers to become their latest TV commercial campaign. And it works!
Not only has TikTok helped surface Applebee’s but it’s helped the country artist Walker Hayes top the charts as well. This is just the latest trend. One TikTok designer “redesigned” many popular logos, and so many brands hopped on board.
The lesson is sometimes the innovators are in nontraditional places and that UGC is still a huge opportunity for brands. Now pardon me, off to practice my next TikTok dance…
Carolyn Lyden,
Director of Search Content
Microsoft Advertising’s new Credit card ads continue its streak of vertical-specific products
Microsoft Advertising has introduced Credit card ads as an open beta, the company announced Tuesday. Credit card ads will appear on the right rail of Bing search results and run alongside mainline text ad placements. These ads can trigger for queries like brand names, card categories and credit levels. Credit card ads are dynamically generated based on advertisers’ data feeds and keywords are not required. They will become available this week to advertisers targeting customers in the U.S. and Canada.
Why we care. This format may be useful for credit card advertisers, like banks, brands and comparison sites, to showcase their promotions. They may also offer increased efficiency for this particular segment of advertisers: “In early flights of Credit card ads, advertisers so far have seen 70% lower cost per acquisition,” Microsoft said.
From an industry standpoint, Microsoft Advertising is on a streak of launching vertical-specific, feed-based products that are unique to the company — in addition to Credit card ads, the company has rolled out open betas for Tours and Activities ads and Automotive ads over the last six months. The platform’s strategy of appealing to advertisers with automated ad formats tailored specifically to their industry may help it achieve wider adoption and increase its market share.
More product and feature announcements from Google Ads this week
Along with the data-driven attribution announcement from Monday, Google Ads made a few other product and features announcements all at once this week. Here’s the latest to keep you in the loop:
- Engaged-view conversions for display: A more robust non-click conversion measurement. Engaged-view conversions allow you to measure conversions that take place after someone views 10 seconds or more of your ad, but doesn’t click, and then converts within a set amount of days.
- TrueView for action to become Video action campaigns: Starting early 2022, all existing TrueView for action campaigns will automatically upgrade to Video action campaigns. As a reminder, September 30, 2021 is the last day to create a new TrueView for action campaign and any existing TrueView for action ads will continue to run until early next year. Moving forward, advertisers can create Video action campaigns using the responsive ad group type during campaign set-up.
- Update to sexually explicit content policy: In December 2021, Google Ads sexually explicit content policy violations will be updated to egregious policy violations. Egregious policy violations result in account suspension upon detection and without prior warning. Google will begin enforcing the policy update on December 1, 2021, with full enforcement ramping up over approximately 4 weeks.
- Send non-personalized ad requests to third-party RTB buyers: Beginning on October 21, 2021, Google will start a phased rollout to enable publishers to begin sending bid requests for publishers’ non-personalized and restricted data processing ad requests to the third-party RTB (real-time bidding) buyers. To protect user privacy, RTB protocol fields that are designed to be used to share user identifiers (e.g., google_user_id) will not be populated in these bid requests. OThe high-level phased rollout plan can be viewed here. The phased rollout plan set out on that page will be updated from time to time, so please review this resource periodically.
Ecommerce SEO guide: Google’s latest documentation for SEOs and developers
With COVID forcing many retailers online, there are more ecommerce options than ever. Google Search Central recently released new guidelines for developers to help improve search visibility for ecommerce sites.
“When you share your ecommerce data and site structure with Google, Google can more easily find and parse your content, which allows your content to show up in Google Search and other Google surfaces. This can help shoppers find your site and products,” said the guide.
The seven pages include information on the following:
- Where ecommerce content can appear on Google
- Share your product data with Google
- Include structured data relevant to ecommerce
- How to launch a new ecommerce website
- Designing a URL structure for ecommerce sites
- Help Google understand your ecommerce site structure
- Pagination, incremental page loading, and their impact on Google Search
Why we care. With many businesses starting ecommerce websites for the first time in the past year or so, this guide can help ensure that they’re following the best practices to get their products seen in the varying search engines Google provides. It also gives SEOs who focus on ecommerce documentation to show their clients and stakeholders to help get their recommendations for better ecommerce SEO implemented.
Search Shorts: Google hosts Search On virtual event today (and we’ve got your coverage), plus don’t forget to take our quick robots.txt survey
Don’t miss Google’s Search On today. Want to know what’s next for search? At this virtual event, Google will “share how we’re making Google more helpful for the trillions of questions we see every year, whether you’re looking for a simple answer, to explore a new topic or find the right product for you.”
And, of course, stay tuned to Search Engine Land for the latest Search On coverage and what it means for you, the search marketer.
Don’t forget to take our robots.txt survey. Should robots.txt support a feature for no indexation? Take the survey. “I’d like to avoid adding more directives. I’m still not aware of common issues caused by this documented functionality,” said John Mueller.
What We’re Reading: We’ve curated our picks from across the web so you can retire your feed reader.
- How to do keyword research for YouTube – Yoast
- What Can You Update in Hotels Knowledge Panel – Online Ownership
- Reporting and the Journey to Advanced Analytics – ClickInsight
- Types of machine learning models – Think with Google
- 13 questions to ask your next PPC agency – Vertical Leap
The post Fancy like🕺… why brands should pay attention to TikTok appeared first on Search Engine Land.
How Dennis Publishing made first-party data core to its business transformation
While many companies struggled to adapt during the pandemic, Dennis Publishing, the parent company of popular media brands like Kiplinger, The Week, several automotive publications, among others, decided to prioritize business transformation and find new ways to drive growth through audience monetization. And its strategy is paying off.
In a recent session at the MarTech Fall Conference, Dennis Publishing’s chief product & data officer, Pete Wootton, joined Jackie Rousseau-Anderson of customer data platform BlueConic to explain how the company is scaling its first-party data strategy, including the launch of ‘Autovia,’ a business unit that combines the power of content with e-commerce to establish a highly engaged auto buying audience.
The intersection of product and data
“Customer data has become an instrumental part of our business strategy,” said Wootton, adding that the company uses the consented data it collects to understand its audiences, inform engagement, and drive growth in all areas of the business, including advertising, demand generation, subscriptions, and e-commerce. “All of these efforts are predicated on having high-quality first-party data.”
Wootton noted, however, that unifying data from across channels and systems into a single customer view is only one part of the equation. The data must also be accessible and actionable by various business teams to inform audience engagement and enhance audience-based products – something the company’s legacy data lake could not do.
“Consolidating online and offline data sources into a single customer view provides insight into who your audiences are and what they are doing,” said Wootton. While Dennis was able to collect and consolidate data from across the business in their data lake, it didn’t enable their growth-focused teams to access and activate that data with the speed, scale, and flexibility they needed to optimize customer experiences and business outcomes. “That’s when it became clear a customer data platform (CDP) would be fundamental to what we were trying to do,” he said.
Expanding CDP use cases beyond marketing
At the start of its CDP journey, Dennis Publishing had a very specific vision for how a CDP could empower its growth-focused teams. But as their knowledge of the technology grew, so did the possibilities.
“We started off with an idea of what our initial use cases would look like, but that evolved and changed over time, and we saw opportunities in certain areas that we didn’t when we began,” said Wootton.
For instance, the company originally planned to use BlueConic’s CDP to power website overlays and modals, email campaigns, and other traditional marketing techniques but quickly saw the benefit of using it to deliver more relevant, personalized, and value-driven on-site experiences.
“The elements and widgets on a particular page are now completely defined by the information we have about a particular user,” explained Wootton.
For instance, with BlueConic, the company can now suppress messaging so they don’t offer a subscription to an individual who is already a subscriber. “This may seem obvious,” Wootton continued, “but it opens up opportunities to offer a new product or do cross-sell and upsell. The real estate on your website becomes much more efficient and effective if you know who is looking at your content. When you’re able to use what you know about a person, you can take a much more targeted and personalized approach to every user on your site.”
Driving e-commerce growth through media audience monetization
Wootton also spoke about how Dennis is leveraging the first-party data it already has from the traditional publishing side of the business to drive growth for the new e-commerce side of the business. In particular, he highlighted how the company’s Autovia business unit is finding innovative ways to connect audiences with carmakers and dealers, and drive new revenue streams via audience monetization.
“We have an e-commerce business that sells cars. With a CDP, we can prioritize and promote the brands and products we offer an individual based on the content they’ve been consuming on our media sites.”
“If, for example, someone only looks for family hatchbacks or sportscars on our media sites, we can then make sure we’re promoting that sort of content on our e-commerce site because it’s much more likely to convert,” he continued. “These small changes can have big improvements in conversion, which is what we’re now seeing with BlueConic.”
Change management is an ongoing journey and company-wide effort
Wootton concluded the session by offering advice to other companies just starting their own business transformation journey. He stressed the importance of communicating the goals, use cases, timing, and expected outcomes for a CDP implementation across the business – from the senior-most leaders in the company who are making the technology purchase to the users who are actually in the platform and using it to support their day-to-day efforts.
“We spent a lot of time talking at a strategic level with the whole business about what we were trying to achieve. If you want people to be engaged, it’s the old adage – it’s about hearts and minds. You need to take them on the journey with you,” said Wootton.
For multi-brand organizations like Dennis, he also recommended starting with one or two brands and then expanding from there. “We have a broad portfolio, so we’ve decided to do a deep dive on a couple of brands rather than having a light implementation across the whole lot,” Wooten said. This implementation approach has enabled the company to zero in on the areas where they will see the highest return on investment and the biggest improvements in business performance. Going forward, their focus will be rolling out what they’ve already implemented for some of their key brands across all of the brands in their portfolio.
The post How Dennis Publishing made first-party data core to its business transformation appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Yelp adds virtual restaurant attribute to help reduce customer confusion
Since the beginning of the pandemic, Yelp has rolled out a number of profile attributes for restaurants, ranging from vaccine-related notices to attributes for LGBTQ and Asian-owned businesses. Now, Yelp is rolling out a Virtual Kitchens attribute for ghost kitchens, virtual restaurants and virtual food courts to identify themselves to potential customers and cut down on confusion regarding their dining experience, the company announced Wednesday.
Why we care
In Q2 2021, business openings for food delivery services were up 166% above pre-pandemic levels, according to Yelp. While these takeout or delivery-only restaurants present customers with a potentially safer dining option, they may also disappoint customers that are looking to dine in. The Virtual Kitchens attribute may help frame expectations, and that may, in turn, result in better reviews and more business.
RELATED: How Google and Yelp handle fake reviews and policy violations
More on the news
- To add the attribute, first log into your Yelp for Business account. Then, go to the Business Information section. Click Add (or Edit if you have existing content) next to “Amenities and more.” Select Yes next to the attribute you’d like to display, then save the changes.
- Other Yelp profile attributes include (but are not limited to) the Asian-owned attribute, “Proof of vaccination required” and “Staff fully vaccinated” attributes and the LGBTQ-owned attribute.
The post Yelp adds virtual restaurant attribute to help reduce customer confusion appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Tuesday, September 28, 2021
Boost your online reputation with your Google My Business ranking
A five-star rating is never enough. When you really start to dive into what your reviews mean to your customers, you’ll see that there’s a lot more to it than just stars.
Join search experts from Podium as they reveal what people notice when they look you and your clients up online, including how the pandemic has changed your customers’ expectations. Learn more about gathering reviews, responding to reviews, and keeping your online reputation robust.
Register today for “Boost Your Online Reputation With Your Google My Business Ranking,“ presented by Podium.
The post Boost your online reputation with your Google My Business ranking appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Ecommerce SEO guide: New documentation from Google
With COVID forcing many retailers online, there are more ecommerce options than ever. Google Search Central recently released new guidelines for developers to help improve search visibility for ecommerce sites. “When you share your ecommerce data and site structure with Google, Google can more easily find and parse your content, which allows your content to show up in Google Search and other Google surfaces. This can help shoppers find your site and products,” said the guide.
The guide has seven pages covering the following topics:
| Where ecommerce content can appear on Google | Understand the different surfaces where your ecommerce content can appear. |
| Share your product data with Google | Decide which method to use when sharing your product data with Google. |
| Include structured data relevant to ecommerce | Help Google understand and appropriately present your content by providing explicit information about the meaning of your page with structured data. |
| How to launch a new ecommerce website | Learn how to strategically launch a new ecommerce website and understand timing considerations when registering your website with Google. |
| Designing a URL structure for ecommerce sites | Avoid issues related to crawling and URL design that are specific to ecommerce sites. |
| Help Google understand your ecommerce site structure | Design a site navigation structure and link between pages to help Google understand what is most important on your ecommerce site. |
| Pagination, incremental page loading, and their impact on Google Search | Learn common UX patterns for ecommerce sites and understand how UX patterns impact Google’s ability to crawl and index your content. |
Where content can appear. The guide says that ecommerce content can actually appear in more results than just traditional search. These include Google Search, Images, Lens, the shopping tab, Google My Business, and Maps. “Product data is the most obvious type of ecommerce related content, but other types of information can also be useful to shoppers at different stages of their shopping journey,” according to the guide. So Google recommends promoting content like product reviews, offers, customer service touchpoints, and even livestreams.
Adding product data. Structured data can also help your ecommerce products show in Google search properties. The guide recommends the following ways to show Google what your products are:
- Include structured data in your site’s product pages.
- Tell Google directly which products you want to show on Google by uploading a feed to Google Merchant Center.
URL structure for ecommerce sites. “A good URL design structure helps Google crawl and index your site,” says the guide. A poor URL structure can cause confusion, though, resulting in missed content, content that’s retreived more than once, and crawlers thinking your site has infinity pages (and beyond!). The guide includes recommedations for a URL structure that helps search engines better understand your content and pages:
- Minimize the number of alternative URLs that return the same content to avoid Google making more requests to your site than needed.
- If upper and lower case text in a URL is treated the same by the web server, convert all text to the same case so it is easier for Google to determine that URLs reference the same page.
- Make sure each page in paginated results has a unique URL.
- Add descriptive words in URL paths. The words in URLs may help Google better understand the page.
Make your ecommerce site navigation Google crawler friendly. Both shoppers and search engines need to be able to easily understand what’s going on with your website and where to find what they’re looking for via navigation. What are navigation best practices for ecommerce? “For example, add links from menus to category pages, from category pages to sub-category pages, and finally from sub-category pages to all product pages.”
Why we care. With many businesses starting ecommerce websites for the first time in the past year or so, this guide can help ensure that they’re following the best practices to get their products seen in the varying search engines Google provides. It also gives SEOs who focus on ecommerce documentation to show their clients and stakeholders to help get their recommendations for better ecommerce SEO implemented.
The post Ecommerce SEO guide: New documentation from Google appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Data-driven attribution to become the default in Google Ads; Tuesday’s daily brief
Search Engine Land’s daily brief features daily insights, news, tips, and essential bits of wisdom for today’s search marketer. If you would like to read this before the rest of the internet does, sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox daily.
Good morning, Marketers, your reputation precedes you.
What does the web have to say about your business? What’s your online reputation look like these days? Platforms like Google have been making efforts to increase transparency so that users have all the information they need to stay safe, but also to protect themselves from increased regulatory scrutiny.
On the PPC side, we’re seeing this play out in Google’s “About this advertiser” initiative (more on that below). On the organic side, the search engine launched the “About this result” box in February and, over the summer, expanded it to include why it ranked a specific search result.
Although users probably aren’t inspecting these details before every click from the SERP, all the information is available to them, which means that it’s easier for them to find out more about your brand. If you’re in a highly competitive space, and/or if your reputation isn’t stellar, the information could cost you conversions. And, with consumer preference and regulatory trends the way they are, platforms will most likely be releasing more of these features to take some of the heat off. If that’s scary for you, perhaps it’s time to audit your online reputation and business practices to make the necessary changes before it’s too late.
George Nguyen,
Editor
Google Ads announces machine learning-based data-driven attribution models in new privacy landscape
“In a move away from last-click, data-driven attribution [DDA] will soon be the default attribution model for all new Google Ads conversion actions,” tweeted Ads Liaison Ginny Marvin on Monday morning. As Google works toward a more privacy-focused search experience for users, it’s also adjusting the available attribution models for advertisers.
DDA works by looking at all the touchpoints, like clicks and video engagements, on your Search (including Shopping), YouTube and Display ads in Google Ads to compare the paths of customers who converted with ones who didn’t. The model then identifies patterns among those interactions that lead to conversations. Over the coming months, Google Ads will be migrating existing conversion actions to DDA for many advertisers over the coming months, Marvin said.
Why we care. Attribution has long been an issue for marketers. This conundrum is especially salient as FLoC threatens to take away even more data from search advertisers — leaving them cobbling together data on their own. Google Ad’s machine learning attribution model seems to be Google’s solution to this lack of data. “Privacy-centric, DDA trains on real conversion paths & uses machine learning to measure and model conversion credits across touchpoints, even when cookies are missing,” added Marvin.
Additionally, DDA was previously only available to accounts with enough conversions in their recent history. Now, all accounts can run it and it’s replacing last-click as the default.
Many advertisers have claimed that the lack of data and reliance on machine learning makes their jobs harder (how can we optimize when we don’t know exactly what is causing success or failure?). This is another case where they will have to just trust the information that Google Ads is giving them without seeing the inside of the process. However, if done well, it could help many advertisers better understand which campaigns and ads are contributing to overall success throughout the funnel.
Should robots.txt support a feature for no indexation? Take the survey
Have you ever blocked a page from being crawled, yet still wanted it indexed? Eric Enge, SEO veteran and general manager at Perficient Digital, says that he’s never encountered such a situation in his 20+ years in the industry.
A few professionals have taken this idea to Google’s John Mueller, asking whether the company has considered making it so that robots.txt files don’t just block crawling, but also indexation: “That would be a significant change in expectations (and yes, we do think about these things regardless). Do you have some examples where this would cause a visible improvement in search?” Mueller responded. “I’d like to avoid adding more directives. I’m still not aware of common issues caused by this documented functionality … SEOs worry about indexing, but usually these URLs only rank for site:-queries (or if there isn’t other, better content on the site), so it feels artificial?”
What do YOU think? Would it be helpful to have a feature in Robots.txt that allowed you to specify the pages you don’t want to have indexed? Take our quick three-question poll and let us know what you think.
SMX Next Super Early Bird rates end this Saturday
With October right around the corner, marketers should be building out their roadmap for 2022. At SMX Next, happening November 9–10, we hope to help you overcome the search marketing challenges you’re currently facing as well as prepare you for what’s next.
On the SEO side, there’ll be sessions covering Python SEO, auditing your Core Web Vitals and ranking in Discover, News and Web Stories, to name a few. PPC practitioners that attend can learn about incrementality testing, advanced modeling for better forecasting as well as how to develop an RSA strategy as ETAs go by the wayside.
As a former content marketer, I’m particularly excited about our session on the future of content creation, in which we’ll learn how to generate hundreds of new content ideas using data analysis. And, as a member of the search industry, I consider it an honor to present to you career development sessions on effective mentorship programs and what to look for when hiring SEOs.
There are way more sessions that you’ll be able to view live or on-demand, and if you register before 11:59 p.m. ET this Saturday, October 2, you’ll be able to take all those learnings back to your company and with you for the rest of your career, at the lowest possible rate. I hope to see you there!
‘About this advertiser’ initiative now includes Advertisers Pages for Google Ads
Last year, Google launched an identity verification program for advertisers, and with that came the “About the advertiser” disclosure. Last week, the company expanded on this transparency measure by adding advertiser pages that enable users to see the ads a specific verified advertiser has run over the past 30 days. This expansion will be rolling out on YouTube and Google Search in the coming months.
Why we care. The advertiser page gives PPC experts the opportunity to show the integrity of their advertising to users but also leaves a trail of previous advertisements. This will hopefully help keep advertisers in compliance with Google’s ad policies and encourage them to think about how their ad history affects any current ads. It seems like there might be an opportunity for competitors to report ad violations (how would consumers know what violates Google’s ads policies?), but that seems like a super niche use case for this feature.
An attribute for Latino-owned businesses, and jokes that aren’t really jokes
The Latino-owned GMB attribute may be on the way. Google My Business profile managers may already be familiar with the women-led, Asian-owned or veteran-led profile attributes (to name just a few), and it looks like the platform will be adding a Latino-owned attribute soon. Tip of the hat to Colan Nielsen for bringing this to our attention.
The metaverse is an environment created by marketers…for marketers? “Marketers often go into new experiences with brand myopia, over-inflating how much people actually want to engage with their brands,” said Marketoonist creator Tom Fishburne. But, as my colleague Chris Wood so concisely put it, “Brands should experiment with new platforms when a sufficient number of their customers are there.”
John’s got jokes. I do believe John Mueller is satirizing Internet 4.0 and dunking on spammy email outreach tactics all in the same tweet.
The post Data-driven attribution to become the default in Google Ads; Tuesday’s daily brief appeared first on Search Engine Land.
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