BrightEdge, an enterprise SEO platform, has acquired technical SEO platform Oncrawl. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Oncrawl will continue to run as its own company. Both customer bases will soon have access to additional technology without an accompanying price hike. What it means for BrightEdge. This acquisition mirrors the merging of SEO and data science. It will allow BrightEdge to perform sophisticated data scientist tasks in their website analysis to complement the work they are already doing on the platform, BrightEdge CEO Jim Yu said. He added that this acquisition is good news for digital marketers who want to scale campaigns with speed and precision. SEO is creating more data than ever – too much for anyone to process without the right marketing technology, Yu said. Data analysis for SEO is complex – and most SEOs aren’t data scientists. So this acquisition means that BrightEdge users can combine Oncrawl’s “zero-code” data science with BrightEdge’s enterprise data and automation. “We saw a big opportunity to help SEOs be more effective at driving performance with data, without having to become data scientists,” Yu said. Oncrawl is the third acquisition for BrightEdge, which was founded in 2007 and has more than 2,000 customers. In 2019, BrightEdge acquired Trilibis, which was crucial in developing their Autopilot offering. Get the daily newsletter search marketers rely on. See terms. What it means for Oncrawl. Oncrawl will still run independently but under the BrightEdge umbrella, Yu said. Typically, when there is a merger, one company absorbs the other, and its customers and employees can suffer in the aftermath. Yu said that would not be the case here. Oncrawl users will soon be able to start benefiting from BrightEdge’s advanced automation and data visualization technology. Oncrawl, founded in 2013, has 50 employees, more than 1,000 clients, and raised more than $4 million in funding since 2013. Why we care. 2022 is shaping up to be a year of mergers and acquisitions in the SEO space – this is the third notable shakeup in the search market. Already this year, Semrush has acquired Backlinko and Conductor acquired ContentKing. Plus, Moz was acquired by iContact last June. All of these changes have implications for users of these tools/platforms. In this case, for now, it seems like things will remain status quo for both BrightEdge and Oncrawl customers – we’ll have to wait until the company’s annual Share event in May to learn additional details about what the path forward looks like, and any implications or advantages for customers. The post BrightEdge acquires Oncrawl in enterprise SEO shakeup appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/i1xEg8e
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The post 202200223 SEL Brief appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/GNa9nsg Google is notifying Google Merchant Center merchants of a new program called the Shopping experience scorecard. In short, Google is telling these merchants that if they provide an “excellent customer experience” Google will in turn reward those merchants with “a boost in rankings,” “a badge” and “other benefits that will help consumers find your business,” within the Google Shopping tab in Google Search. The email. Menachem Ani received the email from Google today and posted a screenshot of it on Twitter: More details. If you click on the link in his Tweet, while logged into your Merchant Center account, you will see the new scorecard section: There is a help document that explains that “the program will monitor the experience you provide to customers in several areas, including shipping speed, shipping cost, return cost, and return window. You’ll be given a rating of “Excellent”, “Comparable”, or “Opportunity” on each metric. “ To see your performance for each metric and your overall score:
Why we care. If you are a merchant and part of Google Merchant Center and you know you can provide that level of “excellent” customer service, then it might make sense for you to share these metrics with Google so you can gain better visibility in Google Shopping. Google did add that if you do not provide the data, you will “not be penalized” – so there is not reason to feel pressured to provide the data to Google, outside of knowing that other merchants might and they might benefit, while you may not. The post New Google Shopping experience scorecard appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3gPtnRj Writing compelling ad copy may be simple, but maintaining high-performing ads can be challenging. Particularly with so much of the process automated through Smart Bidding. Your competition is continuously improving their ads and always seems to choose the relevant words, positioning or offer. This becomes even more complex to drive performance when you add localization. Join paid search expert, Ashley Fletcher, VP of marketing, Adthena, and learn how to maximize ad copy relevance and performance alongside your automated processes. Register today for “5 Steps to Dominate Ad Copy in a Smart Bidding World” presented by Adthena. The post 5 steps to dominate ad copy in a Smart Bidding world appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/98Etd2h Google has begun rolling out the page experience update for desktop web pages and desktop search, a Google spokesperson has confirmed with Search Engine Land. This update will slowly roll out over the next several weeks and be completed by the end of March 2022. Google did tell us that the desktop version of the page experience update would begin this month and now Google has confirmed it has begun rolling out. Page experience update for desktop. This update will include all the current signals of the mobile version of the page experience update, outside of the page needing to be mobile-friendly. Google said all of the page experience factors for mobile will be included with the exception of the mobile-friendliness requirement, which is kind of obvious. Here is a chart Google designed showing the specific factors: What is page experience? Google has a detailed developer document on the page experience criteria but in short, these metrics aim to understand how a user will perceive the experience of a specific web page: considerations such as whether the page loads quickly, if it’s mobile-friendly, runs on HTTPS, the presence of intrusive ads and if content jumps around as the page loads. Page experience is made up of several existing Google search ranking factors, including the mobile-friendly update, Page Speed Update, the HTTPS ranking boost, the intrusive interstitials penalty, safe browsing penalty, while refining metrics around speed and usability. These refinements are under what Google calls Core Web Vitals. Please note, Google dropped the safe browsing factor last year from the page experience update. Search Console tools. Google has released updated page experience reports for desktop a few months ago. You can learn more about that report over here. Don’t expect drastic changes. Google said with this rollout and this new Google update, do not expect drastic changes. “While this update is designed to highlight pages that offer great user experiences, page experience remains one of many factors our systems take into account… Given this, sites generally should not expect drastic changes,” said Google. We expect the same to be true for the desktop rollout. Why we care. While, I do not believe this page experience update will be a significant update where you will see tons of sites see their rankings drastically change, those working towards improving their page experience have been primarily focused on their mobile pages. I would not expect major ranking shifts from this rollout and in fact, if you do see ranking shifts today or tomorrow, I would highly doubt it is related to this update. The post Google page experience update for desktop now rolling out appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/rhBmbxS Auto-apply recommendations in Microsoft Advertising are now out of beta and generally available, the company announced Monday. By default, advertisers are opted into all five of the platform’s recommendation types (more on that below). Why we care. Microsoft Advertising first launched this feature in beta in March 2021 and now it’s widely available, which means it can potentially help more advertisers save time when creating ads or optimizing their campaigns. While opting into auto-apply recommendations won’t increase your budgets, it’s still authorizing the platform to make changes on your behalf, without your involvement. Advertisers should assess whether that’s acceptable for them and opt out if it’s not. Five types of recommendations. Microsoft Advertising currently offers the following auto-apply recommendation types:
Advertisers are opted into all five recommendation types by default; opting in does not increase budgets. View scheduled recommendations. Recommendations that will automatically apply are viewable in the “Scheduled to auto-apply” section of the Recommendations page. The cards in this section provide a short description of the potential issue, the date the recommendation will be automatically applied, and advertisers can also view the recommendation from this card. Email notifications can be enabled for recommendations by switching on the “Ad performance optimization” email preference for all account managers. Recommendations are automatically applied seven days after the email notification is sent. Reference recommendation history. Advertisers have two ways to keep tabs on applied recommendations:
Opt out. Advertisers can opt out at any time by navigating to the auto-apply recommendation control center (the thunderbolt icon on the top-right side of the Recommendations page, shown below). From there, uncheck each recommendation type that you don’t want to automatically apply. Note: These recommendations can still be manually applied in the future. The post Microsoft Advertising auto-apply recommendations are out of beta and advertisers are opted in by default appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/rq6cdVi On February 8, 2022, Google released a document to the U.S. Copyright Office saying “when a site is demoted [by the Pirate update], the traffic Google Search sends it drops, on average, by 89% on average.” This is a statement about Google’s efforts to remove sites that “received a large number of valid removal notices” over DMCA requires, hence the Google Pirate update from 2012. The Pirate update. The Pirate update, which Google originally called the DMCA update, looked at if a site had a large number of DMCA takedown requests and if so, it demoted the site. Google officially only confirmed updating this algorithm once after its launch in 2012, that was in 2014. It is without a question that Google runs this algorithm update periodically to catch new sites that may be copying copyrighted content from others. But Google clearly does not announce each time the search company runs this update. Google said in the new PDF document “we have developed a “demotion signal” for Google Search that causes sites for which we have received a large number of valid removal notices to appear much lower in search results.” 89% demotion. This PDF document written by Google states that when sites are demoted by this algorithm, the sites hit on average see 89% less Google Search traffic as a result. The document states “When a site is demoted, the traffic Google Search sends it drops, on average, by 89% on average.” Redirect tricks. Google also said that it has a flag named “still-in-theaters/prerelease” that will pick up on when a site hit by this update redirects to a new domain without that flag. Google said “we have also made it much harder for infringing sites to evade demotion by redirecting people to a new domain.” Google added “we have added a “still-in-theaters/prerelease” flag for DMCA notices involving this category of content to enhance the Search demotion signal.” This report comes via TorretFreak, a publication that tracks the latest news about copyright, privacy and related topics. Also, a hat tip to @GlennGabe for notifying me of this. Why we care. If a site gets too many (how many is unknown) DMCA takedown requests, it can lead to that site being hit by this Pirate update. If a site gets hit by the Pirate update, you can expect, on average, 89% less traffic from Google Search to that site. And no, redirecting that site to a new domain name won’t seem to help you. So if you run into any clients during an audit that have these notices, which you might see Search Console notification, then maybe check the Google transparency report for the domain and then maybe request reconsiderations after cleaning up the issues. The post Google’s Pirate Update can cause 89% drop in search traffic for offending site appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/4yR6xiB Microsoft Advertising has launched dynamic descriptions for Dynamic Search Ads (DSA), the company announced Tuesday. Advertisers can opt for dynamic descriptions beginning today, but starting in April, all existing DSA campaigns will be forced over to dynamic descriptions and it will also become the default option for new DSA campaigns. Dynamic descriptions for DSAs are available in the U.S., Canada, United Kingdom, France and Germany. Why we care. Microsoft Advertising DSA campaigns can now dynamically generate both headlines and descriptions. However, this change also means that advertisers will lose control over their DSA descriptions starting in April. Interestingly, the company added the ability to use static headlines for DSAs in March 2021. Those that are using static headlines in their DSAs will not be able to run them with dynamic descriptions, Microsoft said in the announcement. Advertisers in sensitive verticals to remain opted out. Advertisers identified as belonging to sensitive verticals (such as pharmaceuticals, for example) will remain opted out of this change for existing campaigns. How to start with dynamic descriptions. In your DSA campaign settings, there should be a new checkbox labeled “Enable dynamic search ad text.” Once enabled, the platform should begin generating dynamic descriptions based on the site content you’ve designated. Top-performing dynamic descriptions can be found in your DSA Search Terms report in the new Descriptions column. The post Microsoft Advertising rolls out dynamic descriptions for DSAs, which will become the default starting in April appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/c4ZjIGr Google uses the phrase “Your Money or Your Life” (YMYL) to describe topics or pages that could potentially impact a person’s future happiness, health, financial stability or safety if presented inaccurately. The stakes are high for this type of content. That’s why Google’s algorithms hold these pages to a higher standard. You need to know whether the topics you cover are considered YMYL. When publishing YMYL topics, also pay attention to what Google values in terms of E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness) in your vertical. This in-depth article will discuss what type of content Google considers to be YMYL and how you can use this information to determine what you should be focusing on to improve E-A-T for those pages. What is YMYL?Google used the acronym YMYL, “Your Money or your Life,” in the June 2013 version of the search quality evaluator guidelines:
PQ here means Page Quality. Google created the guidelines to teach its team of search quality raters who evaluate and provide feedback on the quality of search results and web pages to Google engineers. Initially, they were not publicly available, but today, Google makes this document accessible to everyone. You can read more here about how Google uses its team of search quality evaluators. Google tells the raters that if a page is likely to significantly impact a user’s life, it needs to be considered high quality. It needs to be created with a high level of expertise and authority. Google later reiterated the importance of good E-A-T for YMYL pages in official public documentation. From Google’s guide on how Google fights disinformation:
and
I have added the bolding above. When Google’s algorithms detect that a query relates to a YMYL topic, then more weight is given in their ranking systems to factors contributing to their E-A-T assessment. E-A-T is very important. How you improve E-A-T will vary depending on your industry and the topics covered. Understanding what Google wants to value in terms of E-A-T for your pages can help you determine where to focus your efforts in improving site quality. What is E-A-T?E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness) is a concept that represents Google’s attempts to determine the authenticity of your business, your website and its content. It’s not a single score or metric that we can measure or try to replicate. Rather, Google gathers information from around the web to help approximate whether your website is authentic enough to rank. As mentioned previously, if you write on topics that could be considered YMYL, understanding what Google could assess in terms of E-A-T for your topics is important. Google’s documentation on what site owners should know about core updates tells us that “assessing your own content in terms of E-A-T criteria may help align it conceptually with the different signals that [their] automated systems use to rank content.” Whenever Google hints that something could help us rank better, you should pay attention! So how do we know what these “E-A-T criteria” are? Google’s recommendation is to read the search quality rater guidelines (QRG) for guidance.
The guidelines thoroughly describe many aspects of E-A-T that can be evaluated. We do not know to what extent Google’s algorithms try to replicate what is in the QRG, but as Google’s Ben Gomes said in a CNBC article,
Understanding E-A-T like a quality rater can sometimes help give us an advantage in search. If we know what Google is likely to value, we know how to improve the quality of our pages. Here is just a small section of how the raters are taught to assess E-A-T in the QRG. For five years now, my team and I have thoroughly studied the QRG and everything Google has told us on E-A-T. A complete discussion on how to improve E-A-T is beyond the scope of this article. I have written much on the subject here. I recommend that every SEO reads through the QRG, especially the examples listed within. Ask yourself whether they could apply to your business. In answering these questions, you should find yourself starting to develop a strategy for improving E-A-T. How can you improve E-A-T?When we first started to learn about E-A-T a few years ago, many people focused strongly on the importance of adding expert authors and building out author bios and profiles. While this can be a way to improve E-A-T and also improve user trust, it may not be necessary for all types of content and pages. Author bios can be great for users, but only in so much as they can demonstrate the expertise or authority of the creator of the content. It is the E-A-T of the content creator that matters. So digging a little deeper and working on a brand’s recognition and reputation in ways that a search engine could pick up on is an excellent way to work on your E-A-T. You can also improve E-A-T by working to better answer the questions in Google’s blog post on core updates (or even Amit Singhal’s Panda Questions or Stanford’s guidelines for web credibility). Getting links or even mentions from authoritative sites in your vertical is vital for improving E-A-T. Links are closely connected to PageRank, Trust and Authoritativeness. Even unlinked mentions may help Google discover information about your entities that help them learn information about your business. In some cases, adding references linking to authoritative resources may help improve how helpful or trustworthy a piece of content is for answering a YMYL query. For other sites, an E-A-T-based strategy may start with adding schema to help Google better understand the entities within your content and how they are interconnected. There is so much you can do to improve E-A-T. Let’s look at the above paragraph from the QRG. Based on this paragraph, here is some E-A-T-related advice we could give to clients that may help improve the quality of their pages.
You can take this even further by analyzing the E-A-T of competitors ranking for the keywords you want to rank. For example, suppose the pages ranking for your queries are all authored by recognized experts in your field, with comparable content quality and accuracy. In that case, you are unlikely to rank without one. If the product pages you want to compete against all have user reviews, you likely need good reviews as well. Using the examples in the QRG to determine where and how to focus your E-A-T improving effortsI recently saw something that I had not seen before despite reading the QRG many times; each of the examples listed is labeled as YMYL or not! For instance, recipe pages are not called YMYL. Product pages are, but many pages that talk about products, such as a page advising on choosing a stroller, are not. The following image is from section 4.6 of the most recent version of the QRG published in October of 2021. The section is called Examples of high-quality pages. You can see that some are labeled as YMYL, and some are not. By reading through the many examples in the QRG, you should determine whether or not Google considers your pages to be YMYL. If so, you absolutely must pay close attention to E-A-T. E-A-T may still be necessary for non-YMYL pages, but likely not as much. And different components of E-A-T are likely to matter. While a site writing on a medical topic may be considered to have E-A-T due to having expert authors, a humor or recipe site might benefit from improving things like popularity/recognition, user engagement and user reviews. An e-commerce site would likely benefit from generating a higher volume of helpful reviews from past customers than adding expert authors. Even if you aren’t sure whether you should be working on E-A-T, the examples in the guidelines should help you determine what is likely to be considered when it comes to Google’s understanding of expertise, authoritativeness and trust. Not sure if E-A-T is important? Get clues by reviewing top-ranking pages like a quality rater wouldHere’s a page that is not labeled as YMYL in the QRG but should be considered low quality by the raters, partly because it lacks E-A-T. The article is about how to dress for the office. It’s not something that would strongly impact a user’s safety or life like a medical YMYL query. While E-A-T likely matters to some degree, formally trained expertise is likely not as important for this query. I likely don’t need to have a world-renowned expert on fashion to author this post to rank. But, looking at the current SERP landscape, I can see that some level of expertise still seems to be considered valuable by Google when it comes to ranking for this query. Contrast this to a query labeled as YMYL in the QRG; “using ginger for your health.” Every page ranking well is authoritative and authored by a medical expert. In the case of the Cleveland Clinic below, there is no author listed. If your business is a widely-recognized authority, then listing your authors (and their qualifications) isn’t necessary to rank. In most cases, if you are trying to rank for a YMYL topic, you absolutely should convince the reader that the page is written, or at least fact-checked, by someone with expertise. E-A-T work for e-commerce pages will look different as well. Here’s an example of a page that is labeled as YMYL in the QRG: Because it’s YMYL, we know that E-A-T is important. But again, in this case, it looks like authority and trust (being a nationally recognized brand) are likely much more important than displaying an author who has expertise in this area. If you were competing against this site, would it make sense to gather expert authors on children’s backpacks, create author bios, and write articles to showcase expertise? Likely not! This is not what users would expect for a page like this. Improving E-A-T for an e-commerce site will look different than improving E-A-T for a medical information site. Reading the QRG helps us understand what is important in your vertical. Here is what the quality raters are told makes this page a high-quality one: First, we are told that this is a YMYL page, which means you will have great E-A-T if you compete against pages like this. The page satisfies user intent because it provides several options and has user reviews. This is a clue that perhaps having a variety of products is something searchers find helpful. Also, adding good user reviews can help improve a user’s ability to trust an e-commerce product page and could help improve the quality. A point worth noting is that Target is well known. Authority likely matters significantly if you’re competing against this page. If you’re a relatively unknown brand selling backpacks, you will have your work cut out for you to outrank a page like this. Link building will not make you more authoritative unless you can muster good enough PR work to get the world talking about how your children’s backpacks are the best, which would be a difficult feat! They mention as well that having detailed customer service information is important here. You can read section 2.5.3 of the guide to find more information on how the raters assess customer service information and what users expect to see on a site. We do not know whether or to what extent these items are replicated in Google’s algorithms. However, given that the QRG represents where Google wants to go with their algorithms, we have found it useful to review our clients’ websites like a quality rater would and then discuss and prioritize potential improvements we could make. Examples of E-A-T-related improvementsOur SEO and content strategies can be shaped by asking questions such as:
And so on. Important: Your non-YMYL content can impact the quality of your YMYL contentIn a recent Google help hangout, John Mueller mentioned that if a website covers sensitive topics as well as trivial topics, it could be challenging for Google’s algorithms to figure out how to deal with the website. He recommends having a clear separation between those two areas. Low-quality content on your site can potentially impact how Google trusts your entire site. The QRG lists many things that could cause a page to be considered low quality, including, but not limited to:
By reviewing the examples and descriptions of YMYL given in this article and the QRG, you can determine whether you have content that could be considered low quality. Depending on the scope and nature of the content, we have seen sites improve by doing things such as:
SummaryGoogle goes to great lengths to try and only rank the most authoritative and helpful content when it comes to YMYL queries. Understanding the landscape in which you want to rank, and how Google’s quality raters are taught to assess that picture, can sometimes give you great clues as to where and how to focus your efforts in improving E-A-T. The post How to improve E-A-T for YMYL pages appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/sWJDPzr The post 202200222 SEL Brief appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/nwhpGl7 |
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