Tag: Google
Bug in Google Markup, Windows Photo-Cropping Tools Exposes Removed Image Data
Image-editing tools from Google and Microsoft contain the “aCropalypse” bug, which can reveal information users intentionally removed.
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The ultimate 2022 Google updates round up
30-second summary:
- 2022 saw nine confirmed updates (including two core updates,) five unconfirmed instances where volatility was observed in page rankings, and one data outage that caused chaos for 48 hours
- Video and commerce sites were the biggest winners in the May core update, while reference and news sites lost out most, especially outlets without industry specificity
- This theme largely continued and saw ripple effects from the helpful content update
- What were these ebbs and flows, who won, who lost? Let’s find out!
- Joe Dawson takes us through another round-up post that gives you the complete picture of Google’s moves
Only three things are certain in this life – death, taxes, and an industry-wide hubbub whenever Google launches an algorithm update. Like any year, 2022 has seen substantial changes in how the world’s largest search engine manages traffic and page rankings, with some businesses winning and others losing out.
Arguably the most significant change in 2022 is awareness of the rise of AI for content creation, becoming a hot topic in the world of marketing software. “Helpful content” updates have intended to bolster content written by human beings, penned with consumer needs in mind, over auto-generated articles designed to game the SEO system.
Has this been successful, or is the world of online marketing set for a rise of machines in 2023 and beyond? Similar to my last year’s column, let’s review the Google algorithm updates issued in 2022. I hope this helps you decide for yourself and build your business model around the latest developments in page ranking.
Complete list of 2022 Google updates
2022 has seen nine confirmed updates to Google’s algorithms, while an additional five instances of volatility were noticed and discussed by influential content marketing strategists across the year. We also saw one major data outage that caused a short-term panic! Let’s take a look at each of these updates in turn.
1) Unconfirmed, suspected update (January)
The core update of November 2021 was famously volatile, and just as web admins were coming to terms with a new status quo, further fluctuations were noted in early January 2021. Google remained tight-lipped about whether adjustments had been made to the algorithm, but sharp adjustments to SERPs were acknowledged across various industries.
2) Unconfirmed, suspected update (February)
Again, webmasters noticed a sudden temperature shift in page rankings in early February, just as things settled down after the January changes. While again unconfirmed by Google, these adjustments may have been laying the groundwork for the page experience update scheduled for later in the same month.
3) Page experience update (February)
Back in 2021, Google rolled out a page experience update designed to improve the mobile browsing experience. In February 2022, the same update was extended to encompass desktop browsing.
The consequences were not earth-shattering, but a handful of sites that previously enjoyed SERPs at the top of page one found their ranking drop. As with the mobile update, the driving forces behind the page experience update were performance measured against Google’s core web vitals.
4) Unconfirmed, suspected update (March)
Fluxes in page ranking and traffic were detected in mid-March, with enough chatter around the industry that Danny Sullivan, Public Liaison for Search at Google, felt compelled to confirm that he or his colleagues were unaware of any conscious updates.
5) Product reviews update (March)
March saw the first of three product review updates that would unfold throughout the year. As we’ll discuss shortly, ecommerce sites experienced a real shot in the arm throughout 2022 after the core updates, so this would prove to be a significant adjustment.
The fundamental aim of this product review update was to boost sites that offer more than just a template review of consumer goods – especially when linking to affiliates to encourage purchase. Best practice in product reviews following this update includes:
- Detailed specifications beyond those found in a manufacturer description, including pros and cons and comparisons to previous generations of the same item.
- Evidence of personal experience with a product to bolster the authenticity of the review, ideally in the form of a video or audio recording.
- Multiple links to a range of merchants to enhance consumer choice, rather than the popular model of linking to Amazon.
- Comparisons to rival products, explaining how the reviewed product stacks up against the competition – for good or ill.
The product review update did not punish or penalize sites that failed to abide by these policies, preferring to list a selection of items with brief (and arguably thin) copies to discuss their merits. However, sites, that offered more detail in their assessments quickly found themselves rising in the rankings.
6) Core update (May)
The first core update of the year is always a nerve-wracking event in the industry, and as always, there were winners and losers in May’s adjustments.
The most striking outcome of this update was just how many major names benefitted, especially in the realm of ecommerce, much to the delight ecommerce agencies around the world. Sites like Amazon, eBay, and Etsy saw considerable increases in traffic and prominence following the update, perhaps due to the product review update that unfolded two months prior.
Video sites also saw a spike in viewers and positioning following the May update. YouTube videos began outranking text articles while streaming services such as Disney Plus and Hulu rose to the top of many searches. Health sites began to see a slow and steady recovery after the May core update, for the first time since the rollout of 2018’s Medic update.
News and reference sites were the biggest losers in the May core update. News and media outlets suffered the most, especially those with a generic focus, such as the online arm of newspapers. Big hitters like Wikipedia and Dictionary.com were also pushed down the pecking order. Specialist sites that dedicate their reporting to a single area of interest fared a little better, but still took a hit in traffic and visibility.
7) Unconfirmed, suspected update (June)
Minor nips and tucks frequently follow when a major core update concludes. In late June, many webmasters started comparing notes on sharp changes in traffic and page ranking. Google failed to confirm any updates. These may have just been delayed aftershocks in the aftermath of May’s core update, but the industries that saw the biggest adjustments were:
- Property and real estate
- Hobbies and leisure
- Pets and animal care
8) Unconfirmed, suspected update (July)
More websites saw a sharp drop in traffic in late July, especially blogs that lacked a prominent social media presence. SERPs for smaller sites were among the biggest losers in this unconfirmed update.
9) Product reviews update (July)
A minor tweak to March’s product review update was announced and rolled out in July, but caused little impact – while some review sites saw traffic drop, most were untouched, especially in comparison to changes at the start of the year.
10) Data center outage (August)
Not an update but a notable event in the 2022 SEO calendar. In early August, Google Search experienced an overnight outage. This was revealed to be caused by a fire in a data center in Iowa, in which three technicians were injured (thankfully, there were no fatalities.)
This outage caused 48 hours of panic and chaos among web admins, with page rankings undergoing huge, unexpected fluctuations, a failure of newly-uploaded pages to be indexed, and evergreen content disappearing from Google Search.
Normal service was resumed within 48 hours, and these sudden changes were reversed. All the same, it led to a great deal of short-term confusion within the industry.
11) Helpful content update (August)
The first helpful content update of 2022 saw significant changes to the SEO landscape – and may change how many websites operate in the future.
As the name suggests, this update is engineered to ensure that the most helpful, consumer-focused content rises to the top of Google’s search rankings. Some of the elements targeted and penalized during this update were as follows.
| AI content | An increasing number of sites have been relying on AI to create content, amalgamating and repurposing existing articles from elsewhere on the web with SEO in mind. On paper, the helpful content update pushed human-generated content above these computerized texts. |
| Subject focus | As with the core update in May, websites that cover a broad range of subjects were likeliest to be hit by the helpful content update. Google has been taking steps to file every indexed website under a niche industry, so it’s easier for a target audience to find. |
| Expertise | The EAT algorithm has been the driving force behind page rankings for a while now, and the helpful content update has doubled down on this. Pages that offer first-hand experience of their chosen subject matter will typically outrank those based on external research. |
| User behavior | As a part of the helpful content update, Google is paying increasing attention to user behavior – most notably the time spent on a site. High bounce rates will see even harsher penalties in a post-helpful content update world. |
| Bait-and-switch titles | If your content does not match your title or H2 headings, your site’s ranking will suffer. Avoid speculation, too. Attempts to gain traffic by asking questions that cannot be answered (for example, a headline asking when a new show will drop on Netflix, followed by an answer of, “Netflix has not confirmed when >TV show name< will drop”) suffered in this update. |
| Word stuffing | Google has long denied that word count influences page ranking and advised against elongating articles for the sake of keyword stuffing. The helpful content update has made this increasingly important. 1,000 relevant words that answer a question quickly will outrank a meandering missive of 3,000 words packed with thin content. |
12) Core update (September)
The second core update of 2022 unfolded in September, hot on the heels of the helpful content update.
This update repaired some of the damage for reputable reference sites that suffered in May, while those impacted by the unconfirmed update in June continued to see fluctuations in visibility – some enjoyed sharp uptakes, while others continued to hemorrhage traffic.
The biggest ecommerce brands continued to enjoy success following this update, while news and media outlets continued to plummet in visibility. Household names like CNN and the New York Post, for example, were hit very hard.
The fortunes of medical sites also continued to improve, especially those with government domains. Interestingly, the trend for promoting videos over prose was reversed in September – YouTube was the biggest loser overall.
13) Product reviews update (September)
A final tweak was made to the product reviews update in September as part of the core update, and it proved to be unpopular with many smaller sites, which saw a substantial drop in traffic and conversions. As discussed, it seems that 2022’s core updates have benefitted the biggest hitters in the market.
14) Spam update (October)
In October, Google rolled out a 48-hour spam update. This was an extension of the helpful content updates designed to filter out irrelevant and inexpert search results, in addition to sites loaded with malicious malware or phishing schemes.
Sites identified as potential spam during the update were severely penalized in terms of page ranking and, in some cases, removed from Google Search altogether. The most prominent targets of the update were:
- Thin copy irrelevant to the search term, especially if auto-generated
- Hacked websites with malicious or irrelevant redirects and sites that failed to adopt appropriate security protocols
- Hidden links or excessive, unrelated affiliate links and pages
- Artificial, machine-generated traffic
15) Helpful content update (December)
Early in December, Google began rolling out an update to August’s helpful content update. At the time of writing, it’s too early to announce what the impact of this has been. However, it promises to be an interesting time.
The August update faced criticism for being too sedate and failing to crack down hard enough on offending sites, especially those that utilize AI content and black-hat SEO tactics.
Many site owners will be crossing their fingers and toes that this update boosts genuine, human-generated copy created by and for a website’s target audience. The impact will become evident early in 2023.
This concludes the summary of 2022’s Google algorithm updates. It’s been an interesting – and frequently tumultuous – twelve months, and one that may set the tone for the years to come.
Google will always tweak and finesse its policies, and attempting to second-guess what Alphabet will do next is frequently a fool’s errand. All the same, it’s always helpful to check in with Google’s priorities and see which way the wind is blowing.
Joe Dawson is Director of strategic growth agency Creative.onl, based in the UK. He can be found on Twitter @jdwn.
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Google market pulse for search marketers
30-second summary:
- Google is always testing new spots on the page for SERP components
- In simple terms, the #1 position in organic or paid ads does not guarantee that your paid ad listing will be visible without scrolling
- Organic position #1 reported by Google Search Console is not the actual position 1 on page
- A lot of anomalies and assumptions impact your paid and organic clicks – is there a smart way to counter this problem?
- Leading advisor and performance marketing expert, Prasanna Dhungel unravels four key insights marketers to maximize performance marketing initiatives in 2023
Over the last two decades, Google’s search engine results page (SERP) has evolved a lot. The Google SERP, which once only had organic listings now features dynamic paid ads and other organic SERP components as well.
Currently, Google SERP has many organic features like –
- People also ask (PAA),
- Popular products,
- featured snippets,
- Google MAP,
- image packs,
- videos,
- Tweets, and many more that I believe we are just scratching the surface of
Paid features currently seen on Google SERP are –
- Shopping ads,
- text ads, and
- MAP local search ads
These are some paid features advertisers should not ignore if they want to build better advertising and content strategies for maximum search marketing ROI.
Google varies the composition of SERP by keyword, geography, time of day, and device. Google is testing new spots on the page for SERP components. What does all this mean, you may ask? In simple terms, the #1 position in organic or paid ads does not guarantee that your listing will be visible without scrolling. It means that an organic position #1 reported by Google Search Console is not actual position 1 on the page. So, you have a much lower CTR than you expect, and all these impact your paid and organic clicks.
With this dynamic nature of SERP, search marketers must understand the SERP landscape and their brand’s true rank on Google vs competition. This view will enable search marketers to deploy the right paid and SEO tactics to maximize visibility and clicks.
Based on my experience and understanding of the dynamic SERP, here are four key insights marketers should focus on to maximize their performance marketing initiatives.
1. Analyze the composition of SERP for your keywords
Marketers must understand SERP features visible for their keywords. The graph below suggests that along with organic, SERP features like PAA and popular products are taking significant real estate for “apparel” and “accessories” keywords. Search marketers that are not targeting these components will miss acquiring customers in different stages of their buying journey that are clicking on People Also Ask.
2. Monitor emerging and contracting SERP features
Marketers must understand new SERP features that have appeared and are getting popular for their keyword traffic. This helps develop a long-term advertising and content plan that targets popular SERP features.
In the last quarter, we identified Map Local Search Ads and App Install (in mobile devices) SERP features appearing in the “apparel” and “accessories” keywords. We saw growth in the popularity of PAA and popular products across many keyword groups.
3. Keep track of above-the-fold SERP features
Understanding the SERP features visible above-the-fold real estate is critical. These insights will help marketers understand the dynamics of rising and falling SERP click-through rates. You may wonder why the clicks are declining even though your average position reported on Google Reports is improving. Such questions can be answered with true ad position in SERP.
As shown in the below graph, the usual organic component in this keyword landscape has lower above-the-fold coverage compared to SERP features like PAA and popular products.
Insights like these help marketers understand the fastest gateway to the first page above the fold position. Marketers can build a holistic search strategy to correctly allocate their search marketing budget across organic and paid SERP features.
4. Monitor competitor’s through SERP features
Google is an ultra-competitive channel. You have many domains appear on Google SERP from aggregators to publishers to actual competitors of your business model. To build the right marketing tactics -it is imperative to understand the top domains by SERP features, their competitive tactics, and the SERP landscape changes.
From planning link building to acquiring secondary traffic to improving authority score to crafting advertising and content strategies – SERP-driven insights like these help you maximize search advertising performance.
Additionally, monitoring your top emerging competitors’ tactics across SERP formats allows you to timely optimize your advertising campaigns. As shown in the graph below, Amazon has tremendously improved its Google Shopping Ads Share of Voice from May to July 2022.
When brands like this are heavily advertising in a category, marketers will need to advertise products in categories Amazon is not aggressively pushing and come back when Amazon advertising slows down.
Conclusion
Google is increasingly sharing less data. Google ad data doesn’t show advertisers which low impressions may be appearing and creeping up on your CPCs. Google search console data doesn’t show true rank, and the organic rank shared isn’t representative of the actual location on the page.
Going into 2023, it is imperative for search marketers to use SERP-driven insights to gain an edge in their performance marketing campaigns.
Prasanna Dhungel co-founded and runs GrowByData, which powers performance marketing for leading brands such as Crocs and top agencies like Merkle. GrowByData offers marketing intelligence for search, marketplace, and product management to win new revenue, boost marketing performance and manage brand compliance.
Prasanna also advises executives, board & investors on data strategy, growth, and product. He has advised leading firms such as Melinda & Bill Gates Foundation, Athena Health, and Apellis Pharma.
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How to Filter out Bots and Spiders from Google Analytics
A common misconception is that Google Analytics or any other JavaScript-based Web Analytics solution filters out Spiders and Bots automatically. This was true till few years ago because most of the spiders and bots were not capable of executing JavaScript and hence were never captured by JavaScript-based Web Analytics solutions. As shown in 4 reasons why your bounce rate might be wrong, these days bots and spiders can execute JavaScript and hence are showing up in your Web Analytics reports.
Google Analytics has released a new feature that will let you filter out known spiders and bots. Here are few things to keep in mind
- The data will only filter spiders and bots from the day you enable this setting. It won’t be allied to the data already processed.
- Since this will filter out bots, you might notice a drop in your visits, page views etc.
Here are the steps to filter out Spiders and Bots
- Go to the Admin section of your Google Analytics report
- Click “View” section and choose the right report view
- Click on “ View Settings” (see image 1 below)
- Check the box under “Bot Filtering” which says “Exclude all hits from known bots and spiders” (see image 2 below)
- Click “Save” button at the bottom and you are done.
How to Exclude Internal Traffic from Google Analytics when Internal IP Address is Dynamic
Google Analytics has a build in filter that allows you to traffic from an IP address. It works fine when you have a static IP but when the IP is dynamic is does not work (If you are not familiar with how IP filtering works then I will write about it later). In this post I will explain how to exclude internal traffic using a method other than IP address
Use Custom Filter
Custom filter allows to exclude traffic by Cookie Content set via setVar.
To exclude traffic from dynamic IP addresses, you can use a JavaScript function to set a cookie on all internal computers and browsers. You’ll then need to create a filter to exclude any traffic that has that cookie set.
How to exclude traffic by cookie:
- Create a new page on your site that sets the Custom Variable (User Defined) value in a cookie. The way you do is as follows<body onLoad=”javascript: _gaq.push([‘_setVar’, ‘Exclude’]);”> – Note this code is in addition to your Google Analytics tracking code on your page
- Let’s call this page do-not-track-me.html
- Visit http://www.yourdomian.com/do-not-track-me.html page from all computers and browsers that you would like to exclude the traffic from i.e. all your internal computers and browsers. (Once set, you can check this value by looking at _utmv cookie on your computer)
- Create an Exclude filter to remove data from visitors with this customer variable value:
Filter Type: Custom filter > Exclude
Filter Field: User Defined
Filter Pattern: Exclude
Case Sensitive: No
Note: If at any point you override the cookie or delete the cookie, your traffic will no longer be excluded.
How to Track Outbound Links in Google Analytics
Outbound links can be tracked as Events in Google Analytics
Event tracking requires
- Calling trackEvent function
- trackEvent function can take up to 5 parameters, of those 2 are required
What are those parameters for trackEvent function
- category (required)The name you supply for the group of objects you want to track. It can be anything but be consistent with whatever you decide to use.I suggest using “Outbound Links” for outbound link tracking
- action (required)A name for the type of user interaction for that event. But again you can use anything you like e.g. “Click”,“Partner Link Click” or whatever makes sense for your business.I suggest that if you have different categories of link then use the category name that defines those links.
- label (optional)A string to provide additional description for that event.I suggest using the actual name of the links e.g. gapremium.com, google.com etc.
- value (optional)An integer that you can use to provide numerical data about the user event.You can leave this value in case of outbound links or use 1 unless you want to give more weights to certain links.
- non-interaction (optional)Boolean value, set as true or falsetrue= not a valid interaction, count it as a bouncefalse = considered a valid interaction (default)If you DO NOT set this value then an outbound click will be considered as a valid interaction thus WON’T BE COUNTED in BOUNCE RATE.Suggestion: Since you really do want people to click on outbound links, set this value to true e.g. it is a valid hit and not a bounce.
[adsense]
How to call it?
_gaq.push([_trackEvent(category, action, label, value, noninteraction));
Example:
_gaq.push([‘_trackEvent’, ‘Outbound Links’, ‘Partner Links’, ‘gapremium.com’, 1, true]);
<a href=”http://www.gapremium.com” onClick=”_gaq.push([‘_trackEvent’, ‘Outbound Links’, ‘Partner Links’, ‘gapremium.com’, 1, true]);”>gapremium.com</a>
in this case gapremium.com is the external site.
Real Time Analytics in Google Analytics
What is Real Time Analytics
Real time Anaytics in Google Analytics provides you a view of what is currently going on your site. Current version of Google Analytics has 3 set of reports that it shows real time data for
- Location – Location of current visitors on your site
- Traffic Sources – It shows you the list of referral and keywords for the visitors currently on our sites
- Content – List of pages that the visitors are currently viewing
How To Get This Report
All the users of Google Analytics Latest version have this report enabled. So if you are using old version of Google Analytics, just switch to the new version and you will have this report. It is under “Home” tab (see image below).
Uses of Real Time Analytics
[adsense]
Few cases where you might want to (or be tempted to) use Real-Time Analytics
- You launched a new campaign e.g. paid search, email newsletter, TV ad , and would like to see how people are reacting to those campaigns.
- You added new promotions on your site and want to see how visitors are reacting to those promotions, so that you can tweak those promotions in real time.
- You added new stories, links etc. and want to see if anybody is clicking on them so that you can make some changes based on instant feedback. I can see the usefulness of this feature for news and media sites.
- You made some technical changes e.g. changed tracking code and want to see if those pages are being recorded in Google Analytics. Real time reports can serve as QA tools.
- You launched a new feature on your site, launched a video, deployed a new game and would like to know if your visitors are using it or not.
14 Best Black Friday Google Device Deals (2022): Pixel 7, Pixel Watch, Nest Cam
The sale started early, but there’s still plenty of time to grab a brand-new Pixel 7 or Pixel Watch at a discount.
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5 Ways to Make the Best of the Five Latest Google Ads Features
With technology’s growing influence over trade, PPC marketing has become one of the biggest trends in business. While it has been used extensively in today’s time due to the pandemic shifting most business operations online, PPC marketing’s history dates back to early 2000 when Google launched the initiative AdWords.
Google’s advertising platform has evolved over the last two decades, adding more features and functionality while removing others and rebranding to Google Ads. Google Ads has also continuously kept evolving and adding new features in the last couple of years. In today’s post, we’ll cover Google Ads’ five latest features and show you how you can make the most of them.
What is AdWords?
AdWords was Google’s native advertising system. It was designed to help businesses maximize their potential to reach their target markets online. By partnering with websites, AdWords was able to advertise those websites’ products based on keyword searches and images. It was an effective and progressive marketing tool that sparked the growth of PPC marketing throughout the years.
From Adwords to Google Ads
Despite AdWords’s immense success, the industry remained cut-throat and demanding. Consequently, there was a need to change the tool and adapt it to the new trends in online marketing. This also required changing the name from AdWords to Google Ads.
This was not merely done for aesthetics, as changing the name was a big move to present new features and products that the marketing facet of Google wanted to introduce to the public—DoubleClick and AdSense, to name a few.
Of course, the decision to include Google’s name in the new version of AdWords was effective in attracting more business owners. Not many people would invest in AdWords at first glance, but had they known it was owned by Google, they would have done it in a heartbeat. The change also meant the extension of services of Google for advertising and debunked any false narratives about their services limited only to the use of ads in Google’s search result pages.
New Google Ads Features in 2022
Google is one of the biggest tech companies in the world today, but that doesn’t mean that they can sit idly when opportunities for growth and realizing more profit arise. Additionally, trends in the marketing industry tend to change rather quickly, so what they might have been doing in the past couple of years is considered outdated today.
This creates a need for constant updates, releasing new features within the Google Ads platform to continuously cater to the market’s advertising needs.
The use of Artificial Intelligence, or AI, for example, is one of Google Ads’ most recent features. It works like magic in terms of creating personalized ads for users, making them more relevant.
This brings us to an important question: What are Google Ads’ new features, and how does a business owner or marketer make the most of each? Let’s have a look.
#1 Use Google Ads Local Campaigns to Better Track Conversions
In today’s time, it’s easy for marketers and business owners to be fooled into thinking that the world is fully digital. That’s simply not true because many transactions made by consumers nowadays are still conducted physically, and the things they do when it comes to shopping online might only be a small portion of their entire shopping behavior.
According to the latest data from Google, about 30 percent of all mobile queries made online correspond to local searches, and of this number, approximately 75 percent would actually pay a visit to the store within the next day. These are substantial amounts of sales that could have been used as leads for more effective conversion of clients.
With Google Ads’ new feature for Local Campaigns, companies can now use this foregone opportunity just by using their WiFi or GPS. Based on users’ real-time location, Google will present personalized advertisement choices to attract sales more effectively. For example, if your company offers a crypto app for paying with different cryptocurrencies, you can have Google Ads show your ad to users when they’re near a local commerce that accepts crypto payments.
The best way to use this feature is to integrate the offline components into a tracking setup that’s omnichannel. If you do not have this type of tracker, now would be the time to invest in one so you can maximize your conversions. By creating different conversion actions for each campaign you launch, you will be able to measure your conversion in a variety of ways and develop a more optimized PPC marketing campaign that meets your goals and justifies your expenses.
#2 Use Google Smart Shopping to Acquire New Customers Effectively
All types of conversions are considered beneficial for a business, whether a customer is new or not. However, new conversions are usually considered more important as they’re more likely to lead to future purchases. All businesses strive to achieve loyalty from their customers, but search engine marketing just isn’t the most cost-effective way to earn that loyalty.
With Google Shopping, one of Google Ads’ newest features, you can easily calculate each customer’s total lifetime value and optimize the way you acquire new customers.
For example, by using the “New Customer Acquisition” option in the settings of the Smart Shopping campaign, you can set an incremental price you’re willing to pay for each new customer that converts compared to a returning buyer. It’s like bidding more for new customers than for current ones to get more value from your PPC campaign.
The best way to use this feature to your advantage is to use varying tags for both returning and new customers, which you can establish through the Tag Manager in your eCommerce platform. In the whole process of using this feature, you have to ensure that your Google Analytics and Google Ads accounts are both connected. It would also be more effective to apply this feature in line with your paid research and promotion agencies.
#3 You Can Get Listed on Google Shopping for Free!
To clarify, Google Shopping is still a generally paid PPC avenue. However, there is an option for you to enjoy the free traffic it offers. This comes after the introduction of the Google Shopping feature, and as part of it, Google itself ejected other price comparison websites from its SERP.
It was a move that resulted in Google being fined around three billion dollars by the European Commission in 2017 for providing an unfair advantage to a different Google product, the Comparison Shopping service. While this is still an ongoing issue, they decided to make Google Shopping an official feature for their clients to enjoy.
The best way to get the most out of this feature is to optimize every single one of your Shopping Ads and assess which of the products you currently endorse entail the highest click and conversion rates. For instance, using Google Analyzer will help you get this information and use it to make the necessary changes for your product pages and emphasize the products with the most substantial profit margins.
Once you sort all this out, you can proceed to your Google Merchant Center account in the North Menu and change the status of your “Surfaces across Google” to “Active.”
This is an easy process if you’re in the US or India, but the feature has yet to be available in other countries.
#4 Free Impression for Display—Pay Only for Conversions
When talking about online acquisitions, display and video ads are usually not the first things that experienced marketers would talk about. More than conversions, these two things are usually known for their capacity to establish brand awareness and influence targets. But Google, being the trendsetter it is, has decided that it is time to deviate from this narrative.
Considering the gargantuan amount of data Google has on its users’ profiles and intents, predicting their purchasing decisions can almost be considered easy.
Just like Facebook can boost its platform’s marketing performance from its users’ browsing history, Google also has a massive command over its users’ behaviors—from their music preferences to their present and past purchases as recorded via their Gmail accounts.
Because of the control that Google has over its users’ data, they are especially capable of tweaking the algorithm so that only relevant and appropriate visual ads will be shown to the users, ultimately driving them to make a purchase.
This power comes in the form of the new Display and Youtube ads features. By using these features, your chances of realizing actual conversions will be greatly enhanced.
To make this feature a valuable tool for you, you have to use the “Custom Intent on your competitors” and “Similar Converters.” Additionally, you can deploy Smart Display with Toras or a CPA bidding strategy.
#5 Your New Best Friends: Gallery Ads and Showcase Shopping Ads
If you don’t already know, it is possible to test both Gallery and Showcase Shopping Ads on Search. Based on recent data, it’s proven that roughly 85% of all users pay more attention to the information presented visually as compared to pure text. Intent Lab Research has provided a supplemental study saying that 50% of shoppers in various categories like household goods and electronics prefer seeing visual information. So, even if you’re building brand loyalty by offering free stuff for seniors or selling high-tech equipment for graphic designers, you’ll benefit from visual ads more than from pure text ads.
With this being said, Google Ads has devised a feature that allows using new ad formats uniquely designed for mobile display through Google’s Search Network. It provides an avenue for you to be more creative and personal with your ads, and above all, you can place those ads on several other platforms like Gmail and Youtube, which can be huge!
One way to use this new feature effectively is to explore your product’s potential to be more visually appealing by getting creative. For example, you can ask your PPC agency’s help to look into what your target market finds the most appealing based on how ads are placed on certain channels like Gmail or Youtube. This will entail a repetitive process with a lot of trial and error before arriving at the best fit for your target audience. Still, it will come in handy, especially when trying to make the most out of your creative ads.
Final Verdict
Through the years, Google has retained its position as the biggest search in the world. As its influence grew over time, it also took the role of an effective PPC marketing tool, first as AdSense and now as Google Ads. As trends change, Google will continue to add new features in Google Ads to allow marketers and users to benefit mutually. This ensures a more stable profit for companies while giving their customers the freedom to choose which form of ads they’re presented with.
As such, partner companies must make the best use of Google Ads’ current and upcoming features, especially when it is an avenue that has great potential to uplift a business through perfectly generated and positioned ads.
PPC Marketing remains one of the biggest trends in marketing today, and it will likely continue to dominate in the coming years, with Google and Google Ads at the forefront. This is why business owners and marketers need to understand, research, and effectively use the new features Google Ads rolls out and be the pioneers of this new marketing era.
The post 5 Ways to Make the Best of the Five Latest Google Ads Features first appeared on PPC Hero.
How to Add AddThis Analytics in Google Analytics?
AddThis is social share widget that allows your visitors to easily share your content with others via email, social networks etc.
Add this has it’s own analytics that allows you to see what social share option e.g. Facebook, email, etc are visitors using. However, since you are already using Google Analytics, won’t it be nice if you can see your reports right within you Google Analytics reports. That’s exactly what AddThis and Google Analytics integration does.
Add Google Analytics AddThis Integration
You don’t need anything fancy in Google Analytics.
- Create an account at AddThis
- Get your code
- Add following lines of code within your add this code
- <script type=”text/javascript”>
var addthis_config = {
data_ga_property: ‘UA-XXXXXXX-X’,
data_ga_social : true
};
</script>
Here is full sample code:
<!– Google Analytics BEGIN –>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
var _gaq = _gaq || [];
_gaq.push([‘_setAccount’, ‘UA-xxxxxxx-x’]);
_gaq.push([‘_trackPageview’]);
(function() {
var ga = document.createElement(‘script’); ga.type = ‘text/javascript’; ga.async = true;
ga.src = (‘https:’ == document.location.protocol ? ‘https://ssl’ : ‘http://www’) + ‘.google-analytics.com/ga.js’;
var s = document.getElementsByTagName(‘script’)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
})();
</script>
<!– Google Analytics END –>
<!– AddThis Button BEGIN –>
<a href=”http://addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250″>
<img src=”http://s7.addthis.com/static/btn/v2/lg-share-en.gif” width=”125″ height=”16″ alt=”Bookmark and Share” style=”border:0″/>
</a>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
var addthis_config = {
data_ga_property: ‘UA-xxxxxx-x’,
data_ga_social: true
};
</script>
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://s7.addthis.com/js/250/addthis_widget.js#pubid=gapremium”></script>
Here is what you will see in Google Analytics
