With 800 million active users worldwide, TikTok is influencing a whole new generation of social media users and consumers. This webinar will break down how content and influencers drive engagement and influence consumer behavior. Learn how to measure your competitive share of voice, engage consumers and drive revenue growth for your business. Register today for “Unlock the Power of TikTok for Your Social Strategy” presented by NetBase Quid. The post Webinar: Unlock the power of TikTok for your social strategy appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/N6dbTmA
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Everyones favorite new tool Google Analytics 4 is now showing performance data from Performance Max and Smart Shopping campaigns. Where. To view PMax and SS campaigns, navigate to Acquisition > Traffic acquisition report, you’ll see that the data is organized by the Session default channel grouping dimension. (Click + to choose a secondary dimension.) Performance Max and Smart Shopping campaigns are under Cross Network. Google announcement. This is one that Google may or may not have forgotten to publicly announce, but Charles Farina discovered and posted about it on Linkedin this week. You can review the GA4 default channel groupings help doc here. Why we care. The rollout of GA4 has a lot of us less than enthused. Mix that in with the elusiveness of Performance Max and you have yourself some pretty PO’d advertisers. While the addition of this data gets us one step closer to full visibility, let’s just see how the information is reported and attributed. The post GA4 now shows Performance Max and Smart Shopping data appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/zEdibC5 Google has updated its Merchant Center policy to no longer automatically disapproved free listings for products that have login required and/or restricted purchase access. Google said it now will list these products as active but with the caveat that they may “have limited visibility on Google.” What changed. Google said previously, Google Merchant Center accounts with the “Login required” or the “Restricted purchase” issue were automatically disapproved. Now, free listings in Google Merchant Center accounts with this issue status are still active, but their products have limited visibility on Google. This only impacts free listings. What is login required. Google explained “Login required” issue status means that customers visiting your store website need to provide account access information, such as entering a username and password or installing a program, before being able to view your products. What is restricted purchase. Google explained “Restricted purchase” issue status means that the ability to buy products on your store website is limited to certain customers as defined by location, device type, information provided, or some other exclusive criteria. Fields like business information should be optional and content should be consistent and available to visitors in all locations. Why we care. If you have been juggling these policies on your e-commerce site with these login required and/or restricted purchase listings in Google Merchant Center, you now should know that the status won’t be disapproved. Instead, Google will show them as active but these free listings may not show so highly and often in Google Search and Google Shopping. The post Google Merchant Center no longer disapproves login required and restricted purchase free product listings appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/AHoWjnz Google’s Privacy Sandbox initiative began with the intent to create technology to protect people’s privacy. Part of that initiative was to reduce cross-site and cross-app tracking by eliminating third-party cookies. Today it was announced that the initiative has been delayed and developers are aiming for a Q3 2023 launch. Google developers also predict that it will start phasing out third-party cookies in the second half of 2024. Why the delay. Google says that “consistent feedback” from developers, marketers, and publishers, and more testing are the reasons for the delays.
Early testing for developers. Developers can test the Privacy Sandbox API now, and trials will be released in early August as they’re released to “millions of users globally, and we’ll gradually increase the trial population throughout the rest of the year and into 2023.” Read the announcement. You can read the blog post announcement on Googe here, and also visit the Privacy Sandbox website. Why we care. A bad thing for privacy-conscious consumers. A good thing for advertisers? A lot of advertisers and platforms may have been scrambling to find out of the (sand) box solutions to tracking data since it was expected that cookies would no longer be an option. It looks like we’ll have at least another year to prepare. The post Google cookies will remain active on Chrome until 2024 appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/UgBNAkW Google has begun the rollout of the fourth version of the product reviews update, a search ranking algorithm update targeted at ranking product review-related content on the web that is most helpful and useful to searchers. The first product reviews update was launched on April 8, 2021, the second was launched on December 1, 2021, the third has been released on March 23, 2022, and now the fourth has been released on July 27, 0222. The new is named the July 2022 product reviews update. Google announced this update on Twitter referencing the standard help document around how to write product reviews. Google product reviews update. The Google product reviews update aims to promote review content that is above and beyond much of the templated information you see on the web. Google said it will promote these types of product reviews in its search results rankings. Google is not directly punishing lower-quality product reviews that have “thin content that simply summarizes a bunch of products.” However, if you provide such content and find your rankings demoted because other content is promoted above yours, it will definitely feel like a penalty. Technically, according to Google, this is not a penalty against your content, Google is just rewarding sites with more insightful review content with rankings above yours. Technically, this update should only impact product review content and not other types of content. What is new. Unlike the March product reviews update, it seems nothing specifically changed with any ranking criteria with this update. Google is likely just refreshing the algorithm and making slight adjustments. The rollout. This rollout will take “take 2-3 weeks to complete,” Google said. These, and core updates, normally take a few weeks to roll out, so that should be no surprise. You should expect the bulk of the ranking volatility to happen in the earlier stages of this rollout. What is impacted? Google said this update may in the future impact those who “create product reviews in any language,” but Google said the initial rollout will be “English-language product reviews.” Google added they have seen “positive effects” from this update in the past and the search company “plans to open up product review support for more languages” in the future. Please note that these updates can be very big, almost as big as core updates. Previous advice on the product reviews update. The “focus overall is on providing users with content that provides insightful analysis and original research, content written by experts or enthusiasts who know the topic well,” Google said about this update. That is similar advice to the core update recommendations mentioned above, but here is a list of “additional useful questions to consider in terms of product reviews.” Google recommends your product reviews cover these areas and answer these questions. Do your product reviews…
Google also linked to its blog post from earlier this year named providing better product information for shoppers. Google added three new points of new advice for this third release of the products reviews update:
Not a core update. Google also previously said that product review updates are not the same as core updates. This is a standalone update they’re calling the product reviews update. This is separate from Google’s regular core updates, the company told us. Nonetheless, Google did add that the advice it originally provided for core updates, “about producing quality content for those is also relevant here.” In addition to that advice, Google provided additional guidance specific to this update. Why we care. If your website offers product review content, you will want to check your rankings to see if you were impacted. Did your Google organic traffic improve, decline, or stay the same? Long term, you are going to want to ensure that going forward, you put a lot more detail and effort into your product review content so that it is unique and stands out from the competition on the web. Also, those impacted by previous core updates, that put in the work, may be rewarded by this July 2022 product reviews update. The post Google releases July 2022 product reviews update appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/0SThzXH Providing a memorable and consistent customer experience is more crucial and challenging than ever. Businesses must consistently adapt by adopting new technologies, reliably benchmarking performance, and listening to critical customer feedback to deliver unparalleled value and achieve positive growth. Highly personalized, seamless experiences are at the forefront of customer expectations, which means businesses must evolve to provide connected journeys every step of the way. A comprehensive set of solutions that seamlessly mix local marketing and customer experience technology wasn’t available; until now. Local marketing and customer experience technology power unparalleled local experiencesEvery customer’s experience begins the moment they discover your brand. A customer may conduct an online search to learn more about a business or read customer reviews. The experience doesn’t end once a purchase is made. Customers have the power to be a brand’s best advocate or its most vocal critic – either way those experiences are invaluable. Having the tools accessible to better understand your customers’ pain points allows your business to engage more effectively at every touchpoint and build a loyal following. Forsta, the global leader in customer experience (CX), employee experience (EX) and market research, is combining capabilities with Rio SEO, the industry-leading local marketing platform for enterprise brands. Together, the combined technologies power a seamless customer experience solution, enabling brands to engage customers throughout the entire buyer’s journey, from discovery to purchase and through to brand reputation and advocacy. Rio SEO and Forsta are reshaping the local search landscape by bringing to market the industry’s only end-to-end local marketing and customer experience solution for global enterprise brands. We call this unique combination Local Experience (LX), and it’s a game-changer for enterprise brands looking to optimize their business and deepen customer relationships. Rio SEO’s Open Local Platform supplements Forsta’s Human Experience platform by enabling customers to seamlessly expand their customer experience programs into the discovery and consideration phases earlier in the purchase funnel and through to the post-purchase brand reputation and advocacy stage. Rio SEO’s local marketing solutions drive discovery and sales at the local level, at scale and complement Forsta’s technology to support customer engagement and loyalty post-sale. Forsta’s market research and customer experience solutions, recognized as a Leader in the 2021 Gartner® Magic Quadrant for Voice of the Customer, take you from data, to insight, to action by helping you understand your customer, see who they really are, and better respond to their needs. Enhance your discoverability, attract new customers, and build long-lasting relationships with Forsta and Rio SEO’s LX solutions. Visit rioseo.com/forsta to learn more. The post Revolutionizing customer experiences at every touchpoint appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/xbiNgFj Many of the same concepts that you may be used to from Universal Analytics exist in Google Analytics 4. There are, however, several new concepts to GA4. This article will detail some familiar and not-so-familiar concepts that GA4 brings to the table. If you’re new to GA4, I’d encourage you to first check out this article to get up to speed on some of the differences between Universal Analytics and GA4, otherwise, read on. Similar concepts, slightly different applicationLet’s start with the familiar by looking at concepts that exist in both Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4. But first, a small caveat: Universal Analytics has the ability to filter data in a robust manner at the view level. Google Analytics 4 only has a few filters currently available at the property level (there are no views in GA4), and so any differences you may see in your data should keep your current UA filters in mind. With that being said, let’s dive into some familiar metrics: UsersIn Universal Analytics, the Users metric looks at the total number of users during the selected time period. In Google Analytics 4, the Users metric is actually split into two: Total Users and Active Users. Active Users is the primary Users metric in GA4 and what you will see used in the default reports within the GA4 UI. Active Users are the users during the time period that have had an engaging session on your site in the past 28 days. For most sites, these numbers will likely be close. But if you see differences between UA and GA4, this could be a reason why. SessionsIn Universal Analytics, a session is a period of time that a user is actively engaged with your site. There are several things that may end a session, such as an inactive 30-minute time period, a change of UTMs or the session breaking at midnight. In Google Analytics 4, a session is determined via the session_start event. GA4 does not restart a session with a change of UTMs and does not break the session at midnight, but it does look for an inactive time period of 30+ minutes to restart the session. Due to the varying ways a session is started between the two property types, total session counts may look quite different between UA and GA4 depending on how often you may have been subject to the restart criteria in UA – definitely keep this in mind as you compare numbers between the two platforms. PageviewsThese should be pretty similar concepts between UA and GA4. The biggest difference here is that if you are using GA4 to track both app and web, GA4 combines the pageview and screenview metrics into Views. If you are only tracking web for both UA and GA4, the numbers should look pretty consistent between platforms. Less familiar conceptsConversionsConversions are the new Goals, but please note that they are not equal. A Conversion in GA4 is simply an event that has been marked as a conversion. This is as simple as toggling a button on or off to note that the event is now a conversion. Two main things to be aware of here for the differences between Goals in UA and Conversions in GA4:
Engaged sessionsThis is a new concept to GA4. An Engaged Session is defined as “the number of sessions that lasted longer than 10 seconds, had a conversion event, or had at least two pageviews or screenviews.” This new metric allows you to get a better understanding of the sessions that are higher quality and/or more engaged on your site content. Engagement Rate is the percentage of Engaged Sessions. The inverse of Engagement Rate is Bounce Rate (see below). A blending of the twoBounce RateI need to start this one off by saying that I have never been a fan of bounce rate (or time on site metrics for similar reasons). I think that there are many places where the bounce rate calculation in Universal Analytics can lead you astray in your analysis. Simo Ahava even has a funny little website dedicated to showing you what a good bounce rate is. But I do recognize that some businesses (especially verticals like Publishers) rely heavily on Bounce Rate. And I know SEOs tend to like this metric. Google recognizes the need for this metric too. That is why just this month, they’ve released Bounce Rate back into the wild of GA4 (it had previously been considered a deprecated metric for GA4/wasn’t built into GA4 initially). Here is where I need to stress that this is NOT the same bounce rate that you had in Universal Analytics. Not. At. All. In Universal Analytics, Bounce Rate was “the percentage of single-page sessions in which there was no interaction with the page.” Every “bounced” session had a duration of 0 seconds for the total time on site calculation. This meant that even if a user came to your website, hung around for 5 minutes reading every word on your home page, but didn’t click on anything or cause any other event or pageview to trigger, they would be considered a bounce. To say this metric was flawed is an understatement. In GA4, Bounce Rate is a simple calculation that is the inverse of Engagement Rate. Earlier, I mentioned “Engaged Sessions” – 10 seconds or more than one event or pageview. These are the basis of Engagement Rate. This means that Bounce Rate is the percentage of sessions that are considered to be not engaged. Why does this matter? Bounce Rate is now a much more useful metric to show you how many people did not engage with your website. The people who came, read everything on your homepage for 5 minutes and then left are now considered an engaged session, so they will not be counted as a bounce. While imperfect, it’s a much better definition of what a bounce actually is, helping you as the analyst to better understand who is and who is not engaging with your site content. Hurray for improved metrics in GA4! The post GA4 brings new and familiar concepts to the future of analytics appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/dErRG4j If you’ve enjoyed every SEO job you’ve had in the first 90 days, kindly remove yourself from this article for being a liar. We good? Awesome. Did you know that 33% of employees quit their job within the first 90 days that they’re employed. That’s a sobering fact. The kind that makes you want to get not-sober as you kickstart for your first 90 days as an enterprise SEO Director. Enterprise SEO departments have a high turnover rate due to cultural challenges because other departments don’t understand SEO or how to work together. At the risk of stating the obvious, your first 90 days as an enterprise SEO Director sets the stage for the rest of your time at the company. Have you found yourself asking these questions before:
Over the next few articles, I’ll help you answer these (and more) questions, based on my experience as an enterprise SEO Director. Starting with Become a strategic playerIn due time, you can show up to Zoom meetings acting like “the champ is here,” but not in the first 90 days. You’ve got massive plans afoot for an SEO makeover for your enterprise company.
It’s a lot to take in. So I recommend starting with developing relationships. You want your enterprise SEO department to be seen as a strategic player on a bigger team. Allow me to paint you a picture. It’s your second week as the new SEO Director. SEO is a brand new department at the enterprise company. Everyone is excited to have you join the team. Until you start to notice other departments are already doing SEO, but do not realize they are doing SEO. In the second month as the new SEO Director, you present your observations of the challenges and offer new solutions to the executive team. Your presentation goes well. Later, you find out those other departments are not happy with you presenting the challenges you see in their department. This is not what you want to see in your first 90 days as a new enterprise SEO Director. This is a common problem SEO professionals face as SEO is still relatively new in enterprise companies. SEO Directors need to position themselves as a strategic partner that flows and moves with other departments. You will lose credibility and trust without empathyGetting SEO done on a website with millions of webpages requires other teams’ resources. Enterprise SEO teams are never self-contained. Instead, SEO departments lean on the resources of other departments to get things done. The hardest part of my job as an enterprise SEO Director is selling SEO to other teams. I have to persuade other teams that my goals can help impact their goals. So how do we find common ground? The key to finding common ground with empathy. You need to understand what your engineering, editorial, design and other teams care about. You need to look at their goals and priorities and build your goals and priorities to align with them. If you come to the table with audits, deliverables and recommendations, you start to lose social capital. You’re turning people off by getting too into the SEO terminology weeds. For example, instead of saying “I need to set the SEO strategy,” say “I need to align our SEO strategy with your work so my team can make better decisions.” Let’s say that the marketing team’s Q3 goal is to scale the international audience. As an SEO, you might see opportunities in site architecture, page layouts and technical improvements. Ask yourself: Are there SEO improvements we can make that support the scaling of international audiences? You need to overlap your SEO opportunities with the marketing team’s strategy. But your deliverable is documentation of the process into the strategy. You don’t want to skew the conversation by talking about deliverables as audits or keyword research. Your communication is the deliverable. Your SEO deliverables don’t exist for change. Your SEO deliverables exist to create documentation and standardize the process. This way of looking at SEO deliverables will help set the landscape to get the resources you need to execute in your first 90 days. You may need to negotiate for resources. As the SEO lead, you want to communicate that you understand the strategic initiative and that your strategy supports it. My SEO Director 30-60-90-day planDays 1–30Focus: Learning Priorities: Get up to speed on needs and challenges for the Content and SEO team and [Company Name] as a company. Understand the expectations [Your Boss’s Name] has for me, learn how the internal processes and procedures currently work, and start to explore some of the challenges facing [Company Name] and Content and SEO. Learning goals:
Performance goals:
Personal goals:
Days 31–60Focus: Contributing Priorities: Perform my role as Director of SEO at full capacity, with a decreased need for guidance. Start to explore how I can make a unique impact within the SEO channels and [Company Name]. Learning goals:
Performance goals:
Personal goals:
Days 61–90Focus: Taking initiative Priorities: Start assuming more autonomy and finding small ways to practice leadership skills. Start to explore SEO goals for the rest of the year. Learning goals:
Performance goals:
Personal goals:
Your first 90 Days as an SEO Director is a fresh start for you and your companyMost enterprise companies don’t have an SEO strategy at an executive level. During your first 90 days, you want to build a foundation for your SEO strategy that aligns with the bigger marketing and product strategy. The post Your guide to the first 90 days as an enterprise SEO director appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/GoEtOTm Google just announced a Revenue Verification Report to confirm buyer and publisher ad spend7/27/2022 Today Google announced that they have created Confirming Gross Revenue – a new solution to give ad buyers and publishers a way to verify that there were no hidden fees taken from their transactions within Ads Manager. View the report. Advertisers can view the new Revenue Verification Report to see the total gross revenue received from a specific publisher. Google says that the ad buyer and media publisher can then come together to verify that the media cost from the buyers’ report matches the gross revenue the publisher received. The idea here is that if the numbers match, the buyer can assume that their full media spend reached the publisher and no hidden fees were taken. Early testing. Google is testing the new reporting with Display and Video 360, but are collaborating with other demand-side platforms, sell-side platforms, publishers, and agencies to implement similar reporting with other partners. Thanks, Google? Google claims that (on average) 15% of advertisers’ ad spend is unattributable. They claim that while the Google Ads platform doesn’t take fees, they “can’t speak for other companies in the space.” Google has also participated in industry transparency standards “across buyside and sellside businesses, like ads.txt / app-ads.txt, sellers.json and SupplyChain Object into Ads Data Hub to help marketers using Display & Video 360 see the steps their impressions took before arriving on a publisher’s site.” The objective of these transparency initiatives is to give advertisers better visibility into buying decisions and strengthen fraud detection. What Google says. “Confirming Gross Revenue is one part of our efforts to address concerns over the lack of transparency that we have heard from publishers, agencies, advertisers and regulators. Over the next few months, we’ll continue to work with the industry on shaping this new solution and, more broadly, initiatives to instill more confidence in online advertising. Bringing greater transparency to advertisers, agencies and publishers is core to our approach. We welcome participation from others who want to work together to advance an ad-supported internet that works for everyone.” Allan Thygesen, President, Americas & Global Partners. Why we care. Do we? Maybe I’m wrong but I’ve never been fortunate enough to question where my ad dollars are going, and I don’t know any other agencies or advertisers that have. While I don’t agree with some of the websites and platforms my ads end up on, I never considered that mysterious fees were the explanation for any mismatch in revenue reporting. On the upside, this new report might call out shady behavior of platforms that have been taking fees or a cut of ad spend. It doesn’t hurt to check out the new reports if you use Display or Video 360 and see what information they provide about where your ad spend is going. The post Google just announced a Revenue Verification Report to confirm buyer and publisher ad spend appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2foDr1n Google and Microsoft released their quarterly earnings yesterday. Both companies missed the mark and fell short in some areas, but for the most part hold steady given circumstances such as the war in Ukraine (pulling their services out of Russia), supply chain issues, economic uncertainty, and hiring freezes. Here are some key takeaways:
Holding steady. Google claims that despite some pullback from advertisers and the loom of financial uncertainty, performance in search was strong and “customers are still seeing value.” During the earnings call CEO Sundar Pichai spoke about search changes and increased opportunities for shopping, as well as attempts to compete with TikTok and Instagram. YouTube Shorts momentum. Pichai said YouTube Shorts are watched by over 1.5 billion signed in users per month, and over 30 billion daily views. Subscribers surpassed 5 million subscribers – including trials. Last week a partnership with Shopify announced giving advertisers and creators additional opportunities to promote products. Summer search trends. Philipp Schindler, CBO, Google adds that last minute hotel deals and summer vacations increased substantially. Travel brands continued to utilize new tools to streamline the booking and reservation processes. Retailers taking advantage of a full omnichannel strategy including using curbside and pickup features increased revenue by as much as 34% from last year. Schindler continues that searches for “open now near me” were up 8x globally YoY, while searches for “designer outlets” jumped 90%. Additionally, apparel categories such as women’s clothing and other beauty categories such as perfume and fragrances gained interest. Performance Max. I didn’t think we would get off the earnings call without talking about Performance Max. Schindler mentioned that the adoption of Performance Max campaigns are up 5x year to date. Though, it’s not mentioned if those numbers include accounts that have been automatically updated to PMax from Smart Shopping. New developments. 3D AR features are also available to a few retailers such as Target and Wayfair, allowing customers to shop for products in real life. Additionally, the new ad formats allow for a more visual browsing search. CTV viewership is 3.1x more effective than regular tv, and CTV markets will be expanded to LATAM and EMEA markets. Lastly, Schinder mentions that full funnel strategies are gaining speed and advertisers that use them experience 80% unique reach across brand and action campaigns. Listen to the call. If you’re interested in the full Alphabet earnings call, you can listen here. You can also view the Alphabet earnings report here, and the Microsoft report here. Why we care. Though the numbers aren’t as good as analysts may have predicted, Google ads aren’t going anywhere any time soon. New products in CTV, gaming, Shorts, and shopping are keeping ad revenue afloat, despite some advertisers abandoning the platform altogether. Given that they can’t gain any more market share, new products and features will be the only way to keep the momentum going (outside of charging more for advertising). I’ll be curious to see how the adoption of new features pans out in Q3. The post Alphabet, Microsoft release end of quarter earnings appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/teGLNTC |
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