Google is changing the enforcement policy around unique product identifiers for Google Merchant Center from immediate disapproval to limited performance capabilities for free listings. “Products that are missing such attributes will remain eligible to serve but their performance may be limited,” the company said. What are unique product identifiers (UPIs). Google said a unique product identifier, also known as UPIs, are considered products that include Global Trade Item Numbers (GTINs), Manufacturer Part Numbers (MPNs), and brand names in the product feed you submit to Google Merchant Center. Previous enforcement. In September, Google said if a product listing was missing these required attributes, the product was immediately disapproved and no longer shown in free listings. Google said “in order to unify the enforcement of UPIs across programs, specifically the enforcement for multiple different products that use the same GTIN, we’re expanding this enforcement and applying it to products listed in free listings.” Google said then, “beginning September 15, 2021, the following enforcement will apply to products shown in free listings.” New rules. Now, starting in November 2021, “with the introduction of limited performance enforcements, products that are missing such attributes will remain eligible to serve but their performance may be limited,” the company said. Why we care. If you are taking advantage of the free Google Merchant Center and you are not using UPIs on your products in those feeds, you previously may have seen those products being rejected and disapproved. Now, instead, those product listings will likely continue to be served but their performance in Google Search may be limited. The post Google reduces the unique product identifiers enforcement on free product listings appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3jIKTdS
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The post 20211028 SEL Brief appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3pMMXpc Brands stand to lose 50% of their sales on backordered items unless they compensate with customer support, Forrester said in its Predictions 2022: Customer Experience report. The report also forecasted trends for pandemic era services as well as labor practices that may affect customer experience. The research company also published its 2022 consumer predictions as well, suggesting that brand values will continue to be a factor for customers. Customer churn due to supply chain issues. Product availability is one of the most common reasons why U.S. consumers purchase from a retailer other than the one they originally planned on, according to Forrester. These unaddressed product shortages can lead to frustration, which negatively impacts customer loyalty. Brands that can stabilize their supply chains, suggest in-house alternatives to products that are out of stock and proactively message customers about shortages and expected availability are in the best position to curb customer churn, Forrester predicted. Customers will want some pandemic-era services to be part of the new normal. Since the outset of the pandemic, companies have introduced new ways of doing business, like curbside pickup, senior shopping hours, easier and more flexible flight changes and virtual alternatives to traditionally in-person services or experiences. “Brands that successfully navigate the transition to the new normal will avoid a wholesale reversion and analyze current customer insights and research to evaluate which services to keep, adjust, or toss,“ Forrester said. One-fifth of retail and consumer goods firms will compromise on customer experience. Typically, customer expectations only grow stronger, but those demands may be straining employees. The last year and a half or so has highlighted the human cost of these conveniences. Nearly 40% of U.S. consumers say concerns about companies’ labor practices influence their purchasing decisions, according to Forrester. The research company predicts that, next year, more businesses will consider their responsibility to their employees as they plan their customer experience and product offerings. Company values will continue to be a differentiator. Brand values took center stage last summer and that will continue to be the case, but Forrester predicts that the focus will shift to environmental sustainability. By July of this year, three-fifths of Fortune 500 companies had committed to climate action, up from 32% the year prior; and just today, Microsoft announced that it aims to reduce data center water consumption by 95% by 2024. “Brands that take a stand on more highly charged issues will cater to a small segment of hyperaware consumers with a personal connection to those values,” said Lai et al. Why we care. Predictions can be hit or miss, and Forrester’s are no different. However, these predictions align with what many businesses have been experiencing and how consumer sentiment has changed since the start of the pandemic. While most of the predictions aren’t directly related to SEO or PPC, they may affect reviews, ad campaigns and customer loyalty, which greatly influences strategy for search marketers. Supply chain issues have become a major factor for retailers, which may affect inventory decisions as well as ad campaigns ahead of Cyber Week. It’s no surprise that more support and transparency might prevent customers from canceling orders or going to a competitor. Approximately 60% of U.S. and UK consumers agreed that the pandemic changed the way they shop. Having had over a year to become accustomed to services and features that convenience them while maximizing safety, it may be a shock to find that some businesses are no longer offering those services now that the pandemic is more under control. This unpleasant surprise might be reflected in reviews or churn rates as customers seek out businesses that still cater to those needs. Whether your brand’s values and ethics are a selling point for your particular audience should be considered before making those values part of your marketing. Consumers may resonate with this kind of messaging, which might boost loyalty, but they’ll ultimately hold you accountable for your values and living up to that is almost certain to take up resources that could have been allotted elsewhere. The post In 2022, retailers will lose half of sales on backordered items unless they compensate with experience, according to Forrester appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3bhBDsM Another quarter’s earnings report shows that Google is among the winners when it comes to the shifting pandemic landscape. It makes sense that their investment in e-commerce and multi-channel advertising options continues to pay dividends as many people are still hesitant to participate in in-person shopping, dining, and more. That, plus many have just come to prefer the convenience of pick-up, delivery, and online ordering options. 41% year-over-year growth. Revenues for Google’s parent company, Alphabet, went up a whopping 41% YoY according to the report, with ad revenues driving $51.3 out of the $65.1 billion. Google attributed the continued increases to its big push for commerce in Q3 (and before) in the earnings call. Along with the investment in commerce, Google is offering even more options for advertisers who are seeing a return to in-person shopping, especially as the holiday season nears. YouTube is the breakout star. “YouTube advertising revenues reached $7.2bn, an increase of 43% from the previous quarter thanks to both direct response and brand advertising,” reported John Glenday for The Drum. This is the result of YouTube’s CTV (connected TV) advertising increases and its competitive product Shorts, which competes with the likes of TikTok and Snap. This increase is a big deal since Apple’s App Tracking Transparency had the potential to affect YouTube similarly to other video social media apps. Google revenues not affected by legal troubles. Recent lawsuits and controversy with documents being unsealed in those cases don’t seem to be harming the company’s revenues or usage of their products. These controversies include the allegations that the company throttled non-AMP pages, which it “claimed would ‘dramatically improve’ mobile web performance when it launched in 2015, was in fact a scheme to coerce publishers into using the format in order to limit advertising dollars not spent on its own ad exchanges.” Plus, there is a history of alleged collusion with Facebook to “kill header bidding” and essentially rig the ad market in the tech giants’ favor. Why we care. “Google chief business officer Philipp Schindler explained on the call that while shoppers are returning to physical stores, the company’s also seeing ‘strong growth in local shopping queries’ at the same time,” said Sean Hollister for The Verge. Advertisers can expect to see the continued shift in local and omnichannel search marketing strategies, so if you’re not preparing yet, it’s something to consider for your 2022 strategy. On the power dynamics side, Search Engine Land has written multiple times before about the juggernaut that Google has become. Many search marketers are aware of (and not surprised by) the moves the company has allegedly made, and many believe we just have to operate in this environment since we lack the control to change it. However, we can still exercise our power to do good in the industry via constant feedback andThe post YouTube ads are the breakout star of Google’s Q3 earnings report appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3CnuQJN Google is now letting anyone under the age of 18, or their parent or guardian, to request the removal of their images from the Google Search results. The removal request can lead to the image no longer appearing in the Google Images tab or as thumbnails in any feature in Google Search, the company said. Reputation management. This may make the process of removing images from Google Search easier and online reputation management companies may benefit from this. Having more and faster methods to remove content from Google Search is likely welcomed by SEO firms, especially those that focus on reputation management. How it works. Here are the steps to remove these images, assuming you are under 18 and there’s an image of yourself that you want removed from Google results. Now, you or your parent/guardian or authorized representative (maybe an online reputation management firm) can follow these steps.
Why we care. Sometimes teenagers and kids do mindless and dumb things with their phones. Having these controls in place can help undo some of the harm. On a more professional level, this may give more tools for online reputation management firms to deal with some content removal within Google Search. The post Google makes it easier to remove images of kids from the search results appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3bgh6Vr Search Engine Land’s daily brief features daily insights, news, tips, and essential bits of wisdom for today’s search marketer. If you would like to read this before the rest of the internet does, sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox daily. Good morning, Marketers, yesterday my colleague, George Nguyen spoke about how Google’s sterling perception has been tarnished over the years. The question is, is that perception reality? I’ve been covering search and Google for almost two decades, and I’ve seen the company grow over the years. I’ve been through the pre-IPO days, the numerous antitrust claims, seeing executives come and go over the years and search quality and ad quality evolve. Search, both organic and paid search, is complex and confusing and honestly, is not well understood by even people who work inside Google. I’ve performed some legal expert witness tasks over the years, and one thing I find clear is that most attorneys, even top attorneys general, representatives from Congress and the Senate simply do not fully understand the complexities of search or any technology platform. I’ve seen lawyers first-hand misinterpret internal documents and emails both written by advertisers and Google, because they are easy to misinterpret. All I am saying is that just like we question Google’s motives and actions (and we should), we should also question those that question them. Ultimately, we all want the truth, but like former Search Engine Land writer Greg Sterling has told me for almost 20 years, the truth is somewhere in between. Barry Schwartz, Google Ads app campaigns no longer require deep linkingApp advertisers are no longer required to implement deep linking to run App campaigns for engagement, Google Ads announced Monday. As a new option, advertisers can select “Set to app homepage” during ad group creation to direct users to the app homepage. Why we care. Implementing deep links typically means getting developer support, which may be a limited resource in your organization. This new option enables app advertisers to utilize App campaigns for engagement without having to request that support, which may mean that your campaign can get off the ground faster. Deep linking, however, remains useful as it enables this ad type to take users to a specific part of your app, which may translate to better conversion rates than simply sending them to the app homepage. FAQ on Google’s podcast knowledge panel updateContributor Jason Barnard, published a frequently asked question article on the new Google podcasts knowledge panels. Google began showing a specific podcast knowledge panel on October 12, 2021. It displays the podcast name, image, and description on the right sidebar. As of October 25, there is no link within the knowledge panel to listen to the podcast. Jason answered a number of questions that us, the SEO community, are asking about these new knowledge panels. Why we care. If you host a podcast or have a client that does, you will want to check out this article on the new Google podcast knowledge panels and how to get one if you don’t have one yet. Now it’s working – Google Search Console Search Analytics API gains Discover, News and RegexI know we reported this yesterday, but it wasn’t live and fully working. Now, these new API features in the Google Search Console Search Analytics API are really live and available. We are gaining data and features that were previously only supported in the web interface, now the API now supports showing data for Google Discover, Google News and also supports Regex commands. Why we care. Many of you use APIs to help automate and streamline your day-to-day SEO practices and reporting. Having access to these additional data points and adding in Regex controls should make these reporting tasks easier and more automated. This should save you time for other SEO-related tasks, tasks you might have a harder time automating. So if you tried it yesterday and it didn’t work, it now works. Google E-A-T, Google Ads tools, publisher summit and go bowlingGoogle E-A-T roundup. Did you know Google does not hard code or strictly define which category of sites fall within the YMYL (your money – your life) category? Also, trust is more than just links, Google added. When it comes to author names, it is probably best not to just “admin” as the name. Google Ads optimization tools. Google said it has introduced new tools for the upcoming holiday season to help you optimize your ads. This includes new recommendations and shopping campaign tools. Google Ads bowling. Google has a new Python script that helps you stay on top of violations and the new three-strikes and you’re out rule, it is called bowling – check it out. We’ve curated our picks from across the web so you can retire your feed reader.
The post Interpretation of complex and foreign topics; Wednesday’s daily brief appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2Zx4WoM Since its announcement, the page experience update generated much speculation among SEOs. This was because it made user experience more of a Google ranking factor than it had been before and because it was announced more than a year ahead of its rollout. Roughly two months before the rollout, Google went on record to say that the page experience update would be relatively minor: “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.” Now that the update has been fully rolled out for several months, it’s time to review its impact as well as discuss a new way to optimize Core Web Vitals (CWV) and improve your user experience. Few SEOs have seen significant rankings changes, but that’s only part of the story“I don’t know anyone who has been impacted. Even those that had a really bad score… major improvements and no change,” UK-based freelance SEO consultant Andy Drinkwater said on Twitter, speaking specifically in regards to impacts on the search results (rankings). Drinkwater’s experience seems common — numerous other SEOs have also shared that the investment in improving CWV has yet to yield returns in the SERPs. Isolating the page experience update. It’s important to recognize that any perceived results from optimizing CWV might not have occurred in isolation. The page experience update rolled out between June 15 and September 2, 2021. During that span, Google also rolled out two spam updates, the July 2021 core update and potentially numerous unconfirmed updates as well. These external variables make it more difficult to correlate the effects of the page experience update to visibility or performance. But, ROI isn’t just on the SERP. Rankings are only one metric and they do not necessarily reflect the full effect of improved UX for your business. Other metrics, like conversion rate, may benefit as you improve your site for users. “I have seen massive impacts on the conversion and cost savings fronts but not on organic,” said freelance SEO and PPC consultant Arnout Hellemans. While most marketers refrained from getting into specifics or providing data, SEO consultant Kristine Schachinger shared a screenshot of improved clicks and impressions (see below). “Page Speed and CWVs created these increases,” she said.
“Performance optimization may not be a silver bullet for rankings, but we don’t optimize just for that,” said Detlef Johnson, Search Engine Land’s SEO for developers expert. “[Core Web] Vitals, as determined by Google, are the tip of the spear that you can sharpen to cut through the network to load the experience faster, which can lead to more add-to-cart actions because it builds confidence and trust,” he added. Data from tool providers shows a slightly more nuanced viewSemrush’s preliminary study “[hasn’t] spotted any significant changes in rankings.” “Field data indicates very minor changes to all three metrics we measured before, after, and one month into the update,” Aoife McIlraith, VP of marketing, core product at Semrush, said in the tool provider’s assessment of the initial impacts of the page experience update. The study, which focused exclusively on mobile search results, collected the top 10 results from both desktop and mobile SERPs for 2,500 random keywords; the CWV metrics for all the URLs in the top 10 of those results were measured just a week before the update rolled out, roughly a week after it began rolling out and once more, a month after the rollout started. “Since the update, we can see that Google seems to be taking a delicate stance, leveling out the rest of the SERPs instead of changing the top rankings due to CWV factors,” McIlraith said in reference to the share of URLs in which all three CWV metrics were “good.” “So far, we haven’t spotted any significant changes in rankings or managed to link them to CSW [sic] factors, so it’s hard to pinpoint any systematic patterns at this point,” McIlraith concluded, “But some initial analysis may imply that there is a general improvement trend in regard to CWV.” “[CWV] has a measurable influence on the Google rankings,” according to SISTRIX. Approximately two weeks after the page experience update rollout was completed, SISTRIX evaluated how rankings changed for “good domains” (that meet all three CWV criteria) and “bad domains” (that do not meet at least one of the three CWV criteria). “Based on the Visibility Index, we saw that pages that meet all of Google’s requirements rank one percentage point better than the average,” Johannes Beus, CEO and founder of SISTRIX, said. Pages that failed at least one of the CWV metrics, on the other hand, ranked significantly worse (3.7% worse on SISTRIX’s Visibility Index). Correlation is not causation. As mentioned at the top of this article, attributing performance to CWV optimizations may not be straightforward. “Maybe websites that have good Core Web Vitals scores also generally have better content?” Beus said, “There is therefore no final evidence, but there are strong indications due to the timing and the announcement by Google.” In addition, each study also highlighted the unusually high frequency of algorithm updates that occurred this past summer. Optimizing Core Web Vitals with Priority HintsAt this point, it seems like Google’s statement that SEOs “should not expect drastic changes” continues to hold up. Nevertheless, UX is an important factor for most visitors and optimizing it can improve conversion rates. To provide site owners with more control over how their pages load, Google has recently introduced Priority Hints, an experimental feature available as an Origin Trial in Chrome 96+. Priority Hints are a markup-based signal, available through the importance attribute, that allows you to tell browsers about the relative importance of a resource. This can be used to boost the priority of the LCP image, causing LCP to happen sooner and thus improve the associated metric (as shown above). Conversely, you can set the importance to lower the priority of above-the-fold content that may not be as important, like the second, third or fourth images in a carousel. The importance attribute can be applied to the link, img, script and iframe tags. It can be set as “high,” “low” or “auto” (the default value that lets the browser decide the appropriate priority). The Priority Hints feature is available as an Origin Trial from Chrome 96 to 99 and will run until March 22, 2022. Developers or site owners can register for it here. As this is an experimental feature, the future of Priority Hints may depend on the feedback Google receives. Optimizing Core Web Vitals complements holistic SEOSites exist to serve businesses and audiences. For businesses, search rankings should only be relevant with regards to their goals, which are typically generating leads or conversions. While the page experience update may reward content that performs well on CWV with better rankings, “You are not going to notice it when you have other, bigger factors going on,” Johnson said, “If you optimize your titles, you’ll see more of a lift in valuable rankings. If you are in a tie with another website then optimizing the Vitals can give you the advantage you want.” Ultimately, the goal is to please users or potential customers, and improving your page experience via Core Web Vitals optimization can help you accomplish that, regardless of its impact on your rankings. The post Core Web Vitals: SEOs aren’t sold the work was worth it appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3pHJ1WT The post 20211027 SEL Brief appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3pGOVY5 Search Engine Land’s daily brief features daily insights, news, tips, and essential bits of wisdom for today’s search marketer. If you would like to read this before the rest of the internet does, sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox daily. Good morning, Marketers, it’s funny how the darlings of tech have become, to some extent, monsters. Perception of Google, Facebook and Amazon has shifted greatly since their earlier days, when they had to compete based on the value they were able to provide. But, that was when they were disrupting entrenched business models; now, they call the shots. Alleged collusion (Facebook and Google), poor data governance (Facebook) and egregious conflicts of interest (Amazon) are among the more recent headlines about these platforms. Consequently, marketers have become cynical or numb to this cycle, adopting an attitude that I can only describe as “Google’s gonna Google” (likewise for Facebook and Amazon). We’ve grown to tolerate and even expect this type of behavior because, well, it happens a lot and the businesses we work for rely on the volume of users that are on those platforms. However, an apathy towards these issues means that they’re likely to persist: If they can get away with it, they will take more of your levers away, they will rip off your products, they will find ways to make you dependent on them — because we were too busy with our work to see the larger picture or because we didn’t care enough to speak out. I’m not proposing a rebellion. I’m just suggesting that ensuring your stakeholders are aware of how industry news may be impacting them can help to shake off some inertia, for their own good. Perhaps they’ll finally start taking first-party data more seriously, or they’ll shift focus from marketplaces and invest more in their own sites. And, it sounds far less glorious, but submitting feedback means that product managers at these platforms have a trail of evidence that they can bring to decision-makers — Google’s rectification of its botched title change rollout is just one example of how valuable feedback was for the search engine. Don’t be afraid to be the change you want to see in the industry. George Nguyen, Google Search Console Search Analytics API gains Discover, News and RegexGoogle Search Console Search Analytics API users are gaining data and features that were previously only supported in the web interface. After numerous requests from search marketers, Google announced yesterday that the API now supports showing data for Google Discover, Google News and also supports Regex commands. Why we care. Many of you use APIs to help automate and streamline your day-to-day SEO practices and reporting. Having access to these additional data points and adding in Regex controls should make these reporting tasks easier and more automated. This should save you time for other SEO-related tasks, tasks you might have a harder time automating. Google allegedly creates ad monopoly with Facebook to favor its own exchange according to new, unredacted details from Project JediThis past Friday a New York judge unsealed previously redacted documents in the lawsuit against Google led by the State of Texas. One of the main allegations of the antitrust lawsuit is that Google and Facebook colluded to rig ad prices and “kill header bidding” (the attempt by competitors to make the ad market less Google-centric). “The lawsuit claims that when Facebook began to gain traction as a rival advertiser, Google made an agreement with Facebook to reduce competition in exchange for giving the social media company an advantage in Google-run ad auctions. The project was called ‘Jedi Blue,’” we wrote in April of this year. The newly unredacted information shows just how deep the alleged agreement went between Facebook and the search engine giant. Jedi Blue and Facebook/Google ad exchanges. Code-named “Jedi Blue,” the arrangement between Facebook and Google meant that Google would “charge Facebook lower fees and give Facebook information, speed and other advantages in header bidding auctions in exchange for Facebook’s support of Open Bidding, Google’s header bidding alternative,” wrote Allison Schiff for AdExchanger. Why we care. There is potential that publishers and advertisers have been overpaying and missing out on placements due to Google’s alleged collusion with Facebook to essentially rig the ad market. Also with Google promoting FLoC, FLEDGE, and the rest of their sandbox as a privacy solution for the open web, these revelations call into question their motives (especially if the company is sharing sensitive data with other firms that have agreed to terms with them for ads). Google throttled non-AMP page speeds, created format to hamper header bidding, antitrust complaint claims“The speed benefits Google marketed were also at least partly a result of Google’s throttling,” a freshly unredacted complaint from 16 plaintiff states alleges, “Google throttles the load time of non-AMP ads by giving them artificial one-second delays in order to give Google AMP a ‘nice comparative boost.’” The point of slowing down non-AMP ads would be to discourage advertisers from using header bidding — “In Google’s own words, header bidding was an ‘existential threat’,” the complaint reads. This is because header bidding brings multiple demand sources together, which may undermine the dominance of Google’s ad business and cut into the company’s revenue. Why we care. Eligibility for the Top Stories carousels was a big reason for publishers to get on board with AMP, perhaps at the cost of limiting their ad revenue opportunities. If the allegations are true, then what Google was doing is essentially equivalent to making publishers spend more in its ad ecosystem while lying about why it’s better than header bidding — all the while, dangling traffic and visibility (from the Top Stories carousel) to tip the scales in its favor. But, without seeing all the internal documents, it is difficult to tell whether some of these claims represent flawed interpretations. However, Google’s lack of transparency has always worked against it in terms of public trust. We’re always learning how to manage our businesses, but are we also learning how to manage ourselves?How many leads does Google My Business drive? More than the organic section of Google (although that’s still a good source of leads and shouldn’t be ignored), according to Joy Hawkins of Sterling Sky Inc. In her writeup, Hawkins emphasizes leads, not rankings, and compares GMB with organic, noting that both show year-over-year growth for her clients. There’s also a solid reminder in there about GMB not being able to track all phone calls. The 411 on internal links. Does anyone even call (or remember) 411 anymore? Anyway, Lyndon NA, better known as @darth_na on Twitter, has created a thread covering the types of internal links, optimizing considerations and more. Sorry, I got distracted. “Leaders can influence how their teams use always-on 24/7 tools like Slack to avoid the drawbacks of always-on 24/7 working,” said Marketoonist creator Tom Fishburne, “We have to learn to navigate the tradeoffs of faster communication and productivity — and set boundaries.” What We’re Reading: ‘All social media companies want teens to use their services. We are no different.’ — Facebook“Most young adults perceive Facebook as a place for people in their 40s and 50s,” according to a presentation by a group of Facebook data scientists to Chris Cox, the company’s chief product officer. “Young adults perceive content as boring, misleading, and negative. They often have to get past irrelevant content to get to what matters.” Marketers have felt it for some time but now it’s all out in the open: The platform’s decline in younger users poses an existential threat (there seems to be a lot of those going around — see our story about Google and header bidding above). Teenage users of the Facebook app in the U.S. have declined 13% YoY since 2019 and are forecasted to decrease another 45% over the next two years. Additionally, adults between the ages of 20 and 30 are also expected to decrease by 4% over the same period. “Making matters worse, the younger a user was, the less on average they regularly engaged with the app,” Alex Heath wrote for The Verge. Instagram is still popular with teens, but Facebook’s own data shows that it’s losing engagement in important markets, including the U.S., Australia and Japan. Development of “Instagram Kids,” the company’s product planned for children and a somewhat desperate attempt to regain market share amongst youths, has been halted after lawmakers denounced the initiative. Facebook is now 17 years old, giving it a longer run than any other social media network. Unfortunately for the platform, the decline in daily users is likely to be accompanied by a decline in ad revenue as marketers look elsewhere to reach younger audiences.“Our products are still widely used by teens, but we face tough competition from the likes of Snapchat and TikTok,” Facebook spokesperson Joe Osborne told The Verge, “All social media companies want teens to use their services. We are no different.” The post Makes you miss the ‘Don’t be evil’ days; Tuesday’s daily brief appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3Bb6BgN What are podcast knowledge panels? Google began showing a specific podcast knowledge panel on October 12, 2021. It displays the podcast name, image, and description on the right sidebar. As of October 25, there is no link within the knowledge panel to listen to the podcast. Read more >> Podcast knowledge panels go live in Google Search Which podcasts got a knowledge panel? Over 50% of podcasts got a knowledge panel overnight. And they sprang from the Google Podcast Knowledge Graph vertical. RSS seems to be the key: Your feed into Google Podcasts is key. Google applied new, stricter rules for podcast feeds a couple of months ago, and Mordy Oberstein and Azeem Ahmad suggested that was the precursor to what happened on the 12th of October. It seems that podcasts that adhere to those rules have gotten a knowledge panel. That’s not firm data, it’s an observation, but it seems fair enough to assume. In sum, this is a promotion for Google Podcasts, putting it on a par with Google Books and Google Scholar for triggering knowledge panels. Before this update, about 10% of podcasts had a knowledge panel. That’s according to data from Kalicube Pro (which tracks about 500 podcasts). Now they all trigger thanks to other sources, such as Wikipedia, or IMDB. And the podcast knowledge panels that existed before have largely stayed the same. If my podcast didn’t get a knowledge panel, how can I get one? Make sure that your RSS feed adheres to Google’s rules. If you do that, you will probably trigger a knowledge panel at some point. Also, it won’t happen immediately: there will be a process of digestion from Google before it will give you that knowledge panel. So be patient. I also advise that you create an Entity Home. You need to provide an Entity Home so that Google can reconcile all of this information about your entity (the podcast being the entity). If you want to know more, check out this article on Entity Home SEO to help you understand the concept of Entity Home and its role in knowledge panel management. Do knowledge panels always appear for a search on the podcast name? No. Even if it doesn’t appear, that doesn’t mean to say your podcast doesn’t have a knowledge panel you might want to search for “SEO podcasts,” for example (or whatever category your podcast falls under). Then you can look at the carousel that might actually show you the knowledge panel. Examples of podcasts where the knowledge panel does appear directly on the name of the podcast: Edge of the Web, Search Off The Record, With Jason Barnard, and more. This seems to be linked to having a clear Entity Home that isn’t on Google Podcasts. But also based on ambiguity: for example, Everyone Hates Marketers doesn’t trigger the knowledge panel, even though they have one. I think because the name is ambiguous. About 30% of podcasts currently trigger a knowledge panel on a search on the podcast name. That is according to Kalicube Pro data. Can I claim my podcast knowledge panel? No, you can’t unless it was triggered by another source. So if yours has been triggered by something other than the Google Podcasts update from October 12, you can probably claim it. If you can’t, just wait – it will come. Where does the description for a podcast knowledge panel come from? It is taken from the description you provide in your feed. This means you have total control over the description that appears in your knowledge panel for the moment. So make sure that description is great! Can I enrich the contents of my podcast knowledge panel? Yes! Right now, the knowledge panels that have been triggered by this Google Podcasts update on October 12 have not been enriched, but it’s very early yet. If you create an Entity Home, you can provide additional information above and beyond what’s included in the RSS feed. By providing that information on the Entity Home and getting corroborative information all around the web, you will be able to push additional information into your knowledge panel. I would suggest you start now because even if you can’t enrich it right away, you will be able to enrich it over time. So, now is the time to start! This is really big news in the knowledge panel world that I live in, and I’m really excited. It’s the biggest news of 2021 so far for knowledge panels. Expect more in 2022 ! The post Google’s podcast knowledge panel update: Your questions answered appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2Zq8466 |
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