Between March 10th and March 23rd Google said there was an “an internal reporting issue” with the crawl stats report within Google Search Console. This data issue only impacted the reporting tools, and had no impact on your Google Search performance. You may see a drop in your crawl data in that specific report, but that reporting drop is just a reporting issue and not an actual issue with your Google crawl activity. What Google said. Google said between March 10 through March 23, 2021 “you may see a drop in data in this period due to an internal reporting issue,” the company said. Google clarified “this issue did not affect actual page fetches, only the reporting of fetch activity during this period.” Crawl stats report. The crawl stats report can be accessed over here in Google Search Console. This report shows you statistics about Google’s crawling history on your website. For instance, how many requests were made and when, what your server response was, and any availability issues encountered. You can use this report to detect whether Google encounters serving problems when crawling your site. Here is a sample of this report but you can learn more about the report over here: Why we care. Do not be alarmed if you see a drop in your crawl activity during this timeframe. A reporting glitch does not mean your site had any issues with Google crawling or accessing your website. Instead, compare the crawl activity to previous similar weeks to later similar weeks to see if there are issues. But do not use the March 10th through March 23rd timeframe for any analysis of your site’s accessibility health. The post Google crawl stats report data issue appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3cpzg8N
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Digital reality is here to stay. It’s the primary way consumers interact with businesses. So for brands to keep up with the growing demand for exceptional customer experience, they must handle data, digital marketing channels and technology. Because Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) manage various data across multiple channels, they help brands connect the dots between data and customer experience. It seems as though everyone is currently talking about CDPs, but there is a lot of confusion around selecting a solution that covers all of your needs and delivers results. Recent CDP reports show that marketers would best benefit from a solution that focuses on outcomes rather than feature functionalities. To learn more, join George Corugedo, Redpoint Global CTO, in his insightful MarTech session, as he demystifies what it takes to select and implement the right CDP for your needs. He highlights recent case examples of implementations at Redpoint’s customers, including Gap, CVS, Ralph Lauren, 1.800 Contacts, Keurig, GoDaddy, SoFi, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, and a host of other household name brands, to guide your search for the perfect CDP. In addition to hearing real brand examples of identity resolution and real-time personalization, once you attend this session, you will be able to select the right CDP that is best for your needs and understand what makes a CDP drive ROI. Customers are becoming more intelligent and want convenience. Meeting that growing demand for those customer experiences will make you the winner in the new digital reality. Click here to view the session for free. The post Does every CDP do everything? appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2NRKdq7 Although Google was not a pioneer in analytics like they were in organic and paid search, they recognized early on that the seismic shifts the web was delivering to so many aspects of business and life would ultimately be judged by performance measurement. In April of 2005, Google acquired analytics software company Urchin and rebranded as Google Analytics. Over the past fifteen years, Google has continually poured resources into making sure its analytics capabilities kept pace with the exponential growth and sophistication of digital Google’s newest version of Analytics (GA-4) is here. Unlike incremental or lateral changes such as the GTAG collection API; this change is significant, and you need to pay attention and understand what this means to you and your business. In this whitepaper, MoreVisibility will walk through what GA-4 is and how to prepare. Visit Digital Marketing Depot to get your copy. The post Google’s newest version of Analytics (GA-4) is here appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2P3WEj6 Property promotion ads are now available globally for hotels looking to capture demand for users who are searching but don’t know what hotel they’d like to book. “They show prominently in search results for geographical locations, allowing advertisers to position specific hotels in a particular place. Previous to this launch, direct participation in property promotion ads was done through a whitelist,” wrote Peter Fernandez, Product Manager, Hotel Ads in the announcement. Before the launch, advertisers were only able to participate in property promotion ads through a whitelist, but now you’ll be able to participate directly through the Google Ads interface. What they look like. Here are examples included in the announcement: The difference between hotel booking link ads. “While standard hotel booking link ads are meant for advertisers to capture a booking for a hotel a user already chose, property promotion ads are designed to enable advertisers to influence the buying decision for users still looking for a hotel,” said Fernandez. With this launch, property promotion ads will be made available via an ad group type within the Hotel Campaign in Google Ads. All active hotel campaign advertisers will be eligible to show. Why we care. With the COVID-19 vaccine rolling out across the US and globally, more travel-related industries are hoping to capitalize on the incremental increase in travelers–for both business and pleasure. As more people are booking flights and hotels, these newly available ads can help hotels reach consumers who are more top- to middle-of-funnel searchers in the travel space. The post Google announces global launch of property promotion ads for hotels appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3chowJi Good morning, Marketers, maybe you can help me understand something. We preach authenticity as the foundation of our messaging, and it comes from understanding our audiences’ needs. But, major brands make the news all the time for getting it wrong. So, is it just more difficult for larger organizations? And shouldn’t larger organizations also have the means to get everyone on the same page? Here’s an example from my upcoming keynote with Carolyn at SMX Create: On June 2, 2020, Taco Bell made an Instagram post stating that it doesn’t tolerate racism or violence against Black people. Just over two weeks later, a viral video was released in which an employee was fired for wearing a Black Lives Matter mask. What was the disconnect here? There’s usually an apology, but there’s rarely an explanation, and it’s even rarer that the explanation undoes the sense of betrayal. Then, there are less obvious contradictions: Nearly a year ago, Google pledged to disburse $340 million in Google Ads credits to SMBs in an effort to support businesses impacted by the pandemic. Not six months later, it notified advertisers in the U.K., Austria and Turkey that it would be passing on digital service taxes, which were levied on Google by regulators, directly to advertisers. The pandemic didn’t end in those countries, so what kind of message were advertisers supposed to receive? It’s a weird set of decisions — Amazon also passed on the tax to advertisers, but Amazon didn’t come out in support of SMBs, so is Google somehow more disdainful for having tried? Customers are more informed than ever, so understanding how these contradictions occur might help us structure our organization and communications to avoid them. Let me know your thoughts, send me an email at [email protected]. George Nguyen, Google’s current FLoC tests aren’t GDPR compliantWithout consent, a browser assigning a user into a cohort could count as a use of personal data, and would be a violation of European privacy law. This is the assertion that is preventing Google from testing out FLoC with advertisers in Europe, as it will be doing with domestic advertisers in Q2. Google is walking a thin line between advertising capabilities for its customers and increased privacy for users, although the latter has been under fire by privacy advocates for a number of reasons, some of which we discussed in our article FLoC is coming — Here’s what we know so far. This development leaves many questions unanswered: If regulators in Europe speak out against FLoC, will it cause other countries to do the same? And, will Google develop another third-party cookie alternative specifically for Europe? We’ll keep you updated as we find out more. YouTube experiments with automated lists of products detected in videosVideo-related automation has come a long way — remember when captions weren’t automatically generated? Now, Google is testing out automated lists of products based on what it detects in a given video. These lists, which may also contain related products, will appear below the video player, in between video recommendations. Whether they’re watching a video from a manufacturer or a content creator, this might help usher viewers along their customer journey. This experiment will only be available for a limited time and only to viewers in the U.S.; and, it’s part of the commerce experiments for YouTube that Google announced last month. The company didn’t tell us what the lists will link to, but it’ll allow viewers to “make informed purchases directly on YouTube,” according to the announcement. The company is also testing a new way to watch YouTube videos directly within the Twitter iOS app. If this rolls out more widely, it may help content creators get more views and, as a result, further their branding, since users won’t have to interrupt what they were doing to view a video. More than half of SEOs think 65% is too highSimilarWeb’s study on zero-click searches, which we published on Monday, raised a lot of eyebrows. And, according to my highly scientific Twitter poll, the majority of SEOs think that 65% of searches ending without a click to another web property seems too high. There’s a lot to think about here, such as the nature of the queries. Many were quick to point out that users don’t always want to click through to a site, especially for searches like “weather in Tokyo.” Rand Fishkin, who published the study, clarified that the data did not attempt to classify or exclude queries. Does that mean this statistic should be less of a consideration for marketers? After all, we’re not looking to drive traffic from all queries — just the ones that are relevant to our businesses. Even without these kinds of studies, it’s easy to see that the number of rich results, ads and Google products that populate the results page often make users feel less compelled to click on organic listings. JH Scherck brought up an interesting point: “A decade ago, it was *very* possible to use search to acquire customers and build a brand, fast forward 10 years, and being a brand is now a prerequisite to compete.” Creating demand for your brand is incredibly important, especially since we’re often at the mercy of the platforms we rely on for traffic. I have one lingering question about all this: SimilarWeb’s data says that 46.5% of desktop searches were zero-click, compared to 77.2% on mobile devices. As we become more mobile, thanks to vaccine rollouts, how high will the overall zero-click stat go? Fewer people trust online reviews (and 3 other review trends to watch)Online reviews have a crucial impact on small businesses. Proactive online reputation management builds trust with potential and returning customers. Plus, reviews help your visibility in local search. Joy Hawkins gives us the latest trends to watch in local reviews:
Why we care. As reviews continue to be a huge influencer of online purchasing behavior, it’s crucial to know how the various platforms are combatting the issues with fake reviews and how consumers are responding. With reviews still believed to be a local SEO ranking factor, it’s important for businesses to not ignore the weight that reviews still have in the local pack–even if customer sentiment regarding reviews is shifting, especially with the pandemic. Hospitals are noindexing pricing pages because of course they areThere’s a federal rule that states hospitals must publish their prices. Making those price pages available in search engines’ results, apparently, is not part of that rule. So hospitals owned by HCA Healthcare Inc., Universal Health Services Inc., the University of Pennsylvania Health System and NYU Langone Health, among many others, have noindexed that content, according to the Wall Street Journal. In response to the Journal’s questions, some hospitals have said that they’re not trying to hide the information, instead, they’re trying to direct patients to “information they considered more useful than raw pricing data.” Other hospitals have said it was an error and have since made the prices indexable. This reminds me of last year when the IRS required online tax return software companies to index their Free File landing pages. Whether intentional or not, noindexed price pages make that information more difficult to locate, and I think it’s safe to assume that if you’re looking up hospital rates, you’re probably price-sensitive. Companies aren’t going to change, so instead, regulators need to contextualize the availability of information with regard to search and explicitly mandate that such information be made available on a company’s site and discoverable via search engines. The post FLoC testing hits a snag in Europe; Wednesday’s daily brief appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3lQdTAj Microsoft called 2020 a “challenging and disruptive year” for many of us and Microsoft said its goal was to ensure its platform “delivers accurate and relevant information to our customers while protecting them from low-quality or harmful experiences.” With that, Microsoft published its ad quality in review for 2020 and here are some of the highlights. Note, this report comes a week or so after Google released its ads safety report for 2020. Microsoft sensitive advertising policy. Microsoft said it put in “strict measures in place to restrict advertising for products such as covid medicines, covid testing kits etc.” With that, it had its sensitive advertising policy lead to rejecting about 21 million ads, just through that policy alone. This was to help Microsoft with its goal to ensure it “continued to deliver accurate, high-quality results across our platform, at a time when low quality content was increasing,” the company said. Blocking a lot of ads. Microsoft blocked a lot of ads, here are some high level stats the company provided:
How. How did Microsoft handle all these ad rejections and advertiser suspensions? Microsoft said through automated fraud detection and other methods, as well as through manual removals through human reports. In fact, Microsoft said in 2020, it received a total of about 50,000 complaints related to ads not being compliant per its advertising policies. The company investigated each complaint and found that about 65% of the reported ads to be in violation of Microsoft Advertising policies. Most of the complaints were related to trademark infringements, the company said. Why we care. The past year was rocky at best and catastrophic at worst for many search marketers. The global ad market declined 10.2%, according to the Global Ad Trends: The State of the Industry 2020/21 report. With constant evolution, Microsoft and Google’s ad safety reports indicate that it’s evolving its platform and AI to keep up with the ever-changing global situation to help protect both advertisers and users. The post Microsoft Advertising blocks 1.6 billion ads while dealing with the pandemic, says annual ad quality review appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3vYfuce During 2020, more than two-thirds of customers said the way they buy has completely changed, according to a global survey from Salesforce. Those same people said COVID-19 requires brands to enhance their digital capabilities. Join Salesforce for a live webinar, where you’ll get a sense of what your customer expects and how to set your strategy up for success in 2021. You’ll also get tips and best practices from Jordan Speirs, director of strategic partner marketing at Vonage, who will reveal how the brand is putting key trends from 2020 into action. Register for “B2B Marketing Trends Shaping 2021,” presented by Salesforce. The post B2B marketing trends shaping 2021 appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3tOLnSx FLoC, Google’s alternative to third-party cookies, will not be tested in Europe, according to a report by AdExchanger. FLoC is set to open to advertiser testing beginning in Q2 of this year, but countries that fall under GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive will not participate. “During a meeting of the Improving Web Advertising Business Group (IWABG) at the World Wide Web Consortium on Tuesday, Michael Kleber, a Google engineer, acknowledged that FLoCs might not be compatible with European privacy law,” wrote Allison Schiff. “Google will not proceed with FLoC testing in Europe due to concerns over which entity will serve as the data controller and which will serve as the data processor in the creation of cohorts.” Questions on privacy in FLoC. The question seems to be around whether a web browser placing a user in a cohort counts as a use of personal data under the privacy laws. “Processing personal data to generate the cohort assignment without the proper consent could also be a violation,” says Schiff. Why we care. A common concern for advertisers regarding FLoC is the notion that the browser collects user data, sorts it into cohorts, and then Google uses those cohorts for advertiser targeting. Often cited as the “black box,” PPC marketers are skeptical that the tech company is actually protecting user data. In essence, Google becomes the arbiter of privacy, which doesn’t comply with wide-sweeping privacy and data-collection legislation in Europe. We’ll have to keep an eye on how this plays out as testing begins in the U.S. The main questions we have include what’s next for FLoC abroad? Will Google wait for an official privacy ruling? And, if so, what happens if it’s not in their favor? GDPR has already had a large effect on privacy and compliance in the U.S. and abroad, and this may leave European advertisers in limbo as to what will replace third-party cookies. This article will be updated as we collect more information. The post Google’s current FLoC tests aren’t GDPR compliant appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3dg41w7 Online reviews have a crucial impact on small businesses. Most businesses strive for a solid online reputation, which means investing time and money in monitoring these reviews across citation listings. It’s worth the effort, though. Proactive online reputation management helps build trust with potential and returning customers. Plus, reviews help your visibility in local search, and lines from your list of reviews can even show up in your Google My Business listing, too. Here’s a list of the latest trends in online reviews to keep your business in the loop in 2021: More users are leaving 1- and 5-star reviews and fewer are leaving 2-3 stars.According to 2020 stats based on reviews left on Yelp’s platform, over half (51%) were 5-star reviews. Compared to 5 years earlier, the percentage of 5-star and 1-star reviews is growing, and everything in between is shrinking. It’s been a common refrain for most businesses who solicit online reviews. People usually only take to Yelp, GMB, or Facebook reviews when they’re either very pleased or quite disgruntled. The changing distribution of middle star reviews means that it’s more critical than ever for businesses to create a review program to solicit a larger volume of reviews from people who may not have thought to leave one before. While it’s against the terms of service for most platforms to solicit only positive reviews, asking all your customers to rate your business is not against the rules. Fewer people are reporting that they “trust reviews as much as personal recommendations.”In BrightLocal’s 2020 edition of their annual survey to over 1,000 users in the US, 79% of consumers say they trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations from friends or family. However, if we look at the overall trend, we can see that 10% fewer respondents trust online reviews compared to 2014. Another study from Reviews.com corroborated this trend with 38.5% of people polled saying they trust reviews less than they did 5 years ago. This trend can be a double-edged sword. Users are more web-savvy than ever, and they can tell when there are suspicious patterns in reviews–like when a business has all 5-star reviews that were submitted all within the same time period. However, it also means that consumers can sort through potentially negative or fake reviews as one-offs when one or two individuals were perhaps having a bad day and took it out on your business. Overall, while trust in online reviews is trending downward, the number of people who still trust what others are saying about your business is pretty high at almost 80%. We’re seeing an increase in fake reviews.Again, looking at Yelp’s data from 2020, it shows they removed 8% of reviews since Yelp’s inception. Reviews get removed when they are found to violate Yelp’s policies. In 2019, this number was 7% so over time it appears this is increasing (below is a screenshot of what their site said in 2019. In this report by the FTC, Devesh Raval concludes “I estimated that about half of the difference between Google and Yelp ratings of low-quality businesses are due to fake reviews, and at least about a quarter of Google reviews for low-quality businesses are likely fake.” Fake reviews are considered those left by employees, business owners, customers who are lying, vendors, and former employees. It’s important that review platforms like Yelp and Google My Business review and remove these types of fake reviews to not pollute the experience of actual customers and the effectiveness of existing reviews. Fewer reviews were left in the last year due to COVID-19.Recently, in their yearly spam report, Google stated, “We saw a drop in the overall number of reviews due to fewer people being out and about during COVID-19”. I noticed the same pattern when I looked at Yelp’s data. When comparing the differences in cumulative review counts over the last couple of years there was a clear drop in the number of reviews left in the last 3 quarters of 2020. COVID has changed the way review services have functioned over the past year alone. Google paused review services at the beginning of the pandemic due to confusion and communication issues surrounding safety procedures. Many customers were understandably confused when a business listing said they were open but, upon arrival, the customer found out the business was closed or had limited services. The measure from Google helped prevent negative reviews related to this confusion that could harm small businesses who were caught up in the constantly changing protocols. Yelp also adjusted its review service options this year, allowing customers to leave reviews about how a business follows COVID-related health and safety measures. Why we care. As reviews continue to be a huge influencer on purchasing behavior online, it’s crucial to know how the various platforms are combatting the issues with fake reviews and how consumers are responding. With reviews still believed to be a local SEO ranking factor, it’s important for businesses to not ignore the importance that reviews still have in the local pack–even if customer sentiment regarding reviews is slowly shifting, especially with the pandemic. The data also proves that it’s more important than ever for small businesses to implement a review solicitation strategy that follows each platform’s terms of service. The post 4 local review trends to watch in 2021 appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3f8plGo Google is testing a new feature that automatically detects products in videos and displays them, and related products, to viewers as a list, the company posted on its YouTube tests and experiments page yesterday. On Thursday, it also announced a new way to watch YouTube videos directly within Twitter on iOS. What are YouTube feature experiments? Occasionally, YouTube will test new tools and features with a small group of people for a limited time. These are known as YouTube feature experiments, but they’re also sometimes called “betas,” or simply “experiments.” If you notice that your YouTube interface seems different from that of your family or friends, you may be taking part in one of YouTube’s experiments. Automated product lists. “We are experimenting with a new feature that displays a list of products detected in some videos, as well as related products,” Google said in its announcement. The product list will appear below the video player, in between the recommended videos, and the experiment is only visible to users in the U.S. YouTube videos in Twitter’s mobile app. Unlike YouTube’s other experiments, this one is happening on Twitter’s iOS app. The social media company is testing a new way to view YouTube videos inside the Twitter app — for those not in the test group, clicking on a YouTube video within a Twitter post will open the YouTube app for playback. This experiment is available to some iOS users in the U.S., Canada, Saudi Arabia and Japan. Why we care. The experiment description is scant, but it’s safe to assume the product list will contain links that may enable YouTube viewers to continue their research or navigate directly to a product page where they can purchase the item. Presumably, these lists would appear on both the manufacturer’s videos as well as videos about that product from other content creators. This may help usher viewers along their customer journey. We’ve reached out to Google for more information and will update this article as it becomes available. Enabling YouTube video playback directly within Twitter may help content creators get more views and, as a result, further their branding, since users won’t have to interrupt what they were doing to view a video. The post YouTube experiments with automated lists of products detected in videos appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/31e7yoI |
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