Google has added four new features to its Performance Planner forecasting tool, including options for previously ineligible campaigns, “suggested changes,” and more, the company announced Tuesday. Performance Planner’s new features. The updates include:
Why we care. These new features expand Performance Planner’s flexibility, making it potentially more useful for advertisers in more situations. Now, advertisers can add campaigns that may have been previously ineligible, enabling them to generate forecasts for those campaigns. Suggested changes may help improve campaign efficiency and secondary metrics can help you anticipate the impact of changes on metrics that are important but aren’t your key metrics. And, being able to select a specific time range for historical conversion rate may help advertisers get more accurate predictions, which may be especially useful since the pandemic has shifted consumer behavior and introduced supply chain challenges. The post Google Performance Planner adds support for ineligible campaigns, secondary metrics, “Suggested changes” and specific time ranges appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3o94jLS
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Competitive visibility reports in Google Merchant Center are now available in open beta, Google has confirmed to Search Engine Land. The metrics within the reports include relative visibility, page overlap rate and higher position rate. Tip of the hat to Gianpaolo Lorusso for bringing this to our attention. Why we care. Competitive visibility metrics can help merchants understand how often their competitors’ offers are shown compared to their offers, how frequently competitors’ offers are shown together with their offer on the same page and how often a competitor’s offer was placed in a higher position than their offer. This data can help merchants get a more detailed view of their reach across Shopping ads and free listings (specifically or combined), who their competitors are and how visible their offers are compared to their competitors, which may help to identify aspects of their campaigns that they can improve for greater relative visibility. The metrics. The competitive visibility report covers three metrics — relative visibility, page overlap rate and higher position rate. Here is how Google defined each of those metrics.
How to access the competitive visibility report. The report is currently limited to offers that are eligible to generate traffic in the United States. After signing into their Merchant Center account, merchants can click Performance within the page menu. Next, select Competitive visibility. The report includes two tabs. The first tab (“Your competitors”) displays the competitive visibility of pre-selected competitors, while the second tab (“Top merchants”) displays the aggregated competitive visibility of top-performing merchants. Both tabs can be filtered by product category, listing type and time range. The post Google Merchant Center now shows relative visibility, page overlap rate and higher position rate metrics appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3D7cYCD YouTubes experimental tool for creators simplifies keyword research and identifies content gaps11/30/2021 YouTube Search Insights is an experimental feature that shows creators search data such as the queries that led viewers to their videos or query data across YouTube’s entire audience. It can also identify content gaps (when viewers can’t find the exact content they’re looking for). Search Insights was announced on YouTube’s Creator Insider channel on Thursday, November 25, 2021; the company has not provided a timeline for the rollout. The new features are spread across two tabs within YouTube Insights: “Your viewers’ searches” and “Searches across YouTube.” Why we care. This experimental feature provides brands and creators with keyword data that can be used to hone in on their audience’s interests or gauge interest for any topic across YouTube’s entire user base. It also provides them with data on how important those keywords are to their overall view count. And, if it works well, the content gap feature may streamline workflows even further by simply highlighting content opportunities that YouTube has identified. When YouTube Search Insights becomes widely available, brands and creators will be able to use it to improve their content planning to make more relevant videos for their audiences. Your viewers’ searches. The “Your viewers’ searches” tab (shown below) displays the top searches from your viewers or from channels similar to yours. YouTube-wide search volume for the term is also available, although it is described generically as low, medium or high. And, creators can also see the number of views their channel received for a given query (this data is only available for the previous 28-day period). Searches across YouTube. This tab goes beyond a channel’s own audience and allows creators to explore searches across YouTube’s entire audience. This data is searchable, so creators can, for example, type in “Chromebook” to view the most popular keywords viewers are using to find Chromebook-related content. Similar to the Your viewers’ searches tab, search volume is described as high, medium or low and data for views your channel received from these terms is only available for the previous 28-day period. Content gaps. “We’re also testing a new concept called content gaps,” Alina Verbenchuk of Creator Insider said, “A search becomes a content gap when viewers can’t find the information they were looking for.” Content gaps can include instances when users can’t find any results for a particular query or the content they found is low quality, she provided as examples. When applicable, content gap labels appear next to keywords (as shown above) and content gap filters will be available in both the Searches across YouTube and Your viewers’ searches tabs. The post YouTube’s experimental tool for creators simplifies keyword research and identifies content gaps appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3lmq1u0 Google has confirmed that the November 2021 core update is now finished rolling out. The announcement. “The November 2021 Core Update rollout is now complete,” Google wrote on the Google Search Central Twitter account. November 2021 core update. As a reminder, the November 2021 core update started to roll out at about 11 a.m. ET on November 17, 2021. This update took 13 days to roll out after it was announced. So this update started on November 17, 2021 and lasted through November 30, 2021. When and what was felt. Based on early data, this update seemed to roll out fast and in a significant manner for many queries the data providers track. We did see some “tremors,” shifts in volatility, after the initial update the day before and the day of Thanksgiving, as well as on November 30th, these are the final sets of volatility you would see from the initial broad core update release.More on the November 2021 core updateThe SEO community. The November 2021 core update, like I said above, was felt fast and hard. Not just in terms of the ranking impact but the timing. I was able to cover the community reaction in one blog post on the Search Engine Roundtable. It includes some of the early chatter, ranking charts and social shares from some SEOs. What to do if you are hit. Google has given advice on what to consider if you are negatively impacted by a core update in the past. There aren’t specific actions to take to recover, and in fact, a negative rankings impact may not signal anything is wrong with your pages. However, Google has offered a list of questions to consider if your site is hit by a core update. Google did say you can see a bit of recovery between core updates but the biggest change you would see would be after another core update. Why we care. Whenever Google updates its search ranking algorithms, it means that your site can do better or worse in the search results. Knowing when Google makes these updates gives us something to point to in order to understand if it was something you changed on your website or something Google changed with its ranking algorithm. If your site saw any changes between November 17 and November 30, it was likely related to the November core update. More on Google updatesOther Google updates this year. This year we had a number of confirmed updates from Google and many that were not confirmed . In the most recent order, we had: The July 2021 core update, Google MUM rolled out in June for COVID names and was lightly expanded for some features in September (but MUM is unrelated to core updates). Then, the June 28 spam update, the June 23rd spam update, the Google page experience update, the Google predator algorithm update, the June 2021 core update, the July 2021 core update, the July link spam update, and the November spam update rounded ou the confirmed updates. Previous core updates. The most recent previous core update was the July 2021 core update which was quick to roll out (kind of like this one) followed by the June 2021 core update and that update was slow to roll out but a big one. Then we had the December 2020 core update and the December update was very big, bigger than the May 2020 core update, and that update was also big and broad and took a couple of weeks to fully roll out. Before that was the January 2020 core update, we had some analysis on that update over here. The one prior to that was the September 2019 core update. That update felt weaker to many SEOs and webmasters, as many said it didn’t have as big of an impact as previous core updates. Google also released an update in November, but that one was specific to local rankings. You can read more about past Google updates over here. The post Google November 2021 core update is finished rolling out appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3I0TNOF IndexNow has now been turned on by over 60,000 websites that use Cloudflare in less than two months after IndexNow was announced by Microsoft. IndexNow is an open protocol that any search engine can participate in to enable site owners to have their pages and content instantly indexed by the search engine. Microsoft and Cloudflare announced today that “more than 60,000 unique websites that have opted-in to Crawler Hints. Those zones have sent Bing about billion Hints for when specific assets on their websites have changed and need to be re-crawled.” I turned it on for the Search Engine Roundtable, my personal search blog, when it was announced. How to turn it on. It literally is controlled by the flip of a switch in Cloudflare under the crawler hints section that you can access under the cache tab, then under the configuration section: Microsoft said once this setting is enabled it, IndexNow “will begin sending hints to search engines about when they should crawl particular parts of your website.” Google may adopt it. Google said recently that it too will test the IndexNow protocol for indexing. So while Microsoft Bing and Yandex are the only two who have fully adopted it, if Google adopts it, you can expect other search engines to as well. Why we care. Like we said before, instant indexing is an SEO’s dream when it comes to giving search engines the most updated content on a site. The protocol is very simple and it requires very little developer effort to add this to your site, so it makes sense to implement this if you care about speedy indexing. Plus if you use Cloudflare, it can be turned on with the flip of a switch. The post 60,000 websites using Cloudflare turned on IndexNow appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/32NA6cX “Everyone has annoying tasks in their job that you wish you could hire someone else to do, and at this point, you could automate it,” said Colt Sliva, SEO Engineer at iPullRank, in his presentation at SMX Next. “Additionally, you can be effective even when you’re not available.” Many SEOs, however, lack the programming knowledge to set these systems up themselves, which is why automation tools are on the rise. Choosing one may seem daunting with so many automation resources, including no-code, low-code, and maximum-code options. But, as Sliva points out, there is always a tool available, no matter your technical literacy. Selecting a marketing automation tool is just the first part of this process. Here are some actionable steps Sliva recommends marketers take to automate their SEO tasks. Create a data storage spaceEvery marketer has their tool preferences, but Sliva recommends using Google Sheets and its macro scheduling when setting up SEO task automation. “What it will do is run a crawl in your site on a schedule and then write that straight into a single excel sheet,” he said, “You get a summarization of all the features of the crawl, and that data is saved in a sheet.” Craft data visualizationsWhether you want to focus on missing HTML elements such as title tags, meta descriptions or H1 tags, or more technical components like orphan URLs or XML sitemap issues, creating visualizations can help marketers better analyze their data. Sliva shared some helpful SEO data visuals from Dan Sharp of Screaming Frog, highlighting different ways marketers can display their automated crawl data. Develop a feedback loopOnce the data storage and visualization elements are in place, marketers will want to ensure their automation systems can detect significant crawling issues on a regular basis. SEO should use tools that highlight these problems. Sliva pointed to a significant indexability issue shown in his own automated report: “I can see that there’s been an issue in the past here with total internal non-indexable URLs, where the number of indexable URLs completely flip-flopped and most of the site was non-indexable. That is a clear problem that we would want a feedback loop for.” Build SEO alertsAutomation systems that fail to notify SEOs of issues aren’t helpful, even if they can identify them properly. Sliva recommended using a script that pings specialists when a set number of issues arise — in his case, non-indexable URLs. “It grabs the active spreadsheet of the current sheet and then it gets the range of data and grabs the last column and last row. So we have a complete section, and then it grabs the 11th column, which just happens to be the non-indexable column.” SEOs can use scripts of this sort to set automated alerts for a variety of issues, allowing team members to begin working on solutions as soon as problems arise. Automate SEO processes with programming toolsHere are some additional tasks SEOs can automate with their chosen tools, according to Sliva.
“There are endless automation opportunities,” he said. “And that is exciting once you start to track these patterns and these simple programming concepts to get this work done.” Sliva offered a caveat to automation implementation: “If you could spend 10 minutes doing the task manually and then you decide to spend 10 hours writing the code — and you don’t do that task very often — you probably don’t need to automate that task.” But often, the advantages outweigh the costs. It all depends on your campaign goals and workload. “The benefits are speeding up your tasks, removing obstacles, and lightening your workload,” said Sliva. “It’s just a fun problem to solve. If you enjoy solving problems, this is for you,” he added. Watch the full SMX Next presentation here (registration required). The post 5 steps to automate your SEO processes using simple programming tactics appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3EaWZEP Navigating Google updates, algorithm changes, and diagnosing specific causes of traffic loss can be challenging. Throughout the past year, Google has been more aggressive, rolling out changes to their search algorithm, launching three Core Updates along with a variety of more narrowly focused improvements during the year. Complicating things further, many of these updates overlapped or occurred within the same date range, making it more difficult to understand which update(s) may have caused traffic & ranking loss for webmasters. If your SEO traffic is on the decline, let’s take a look at three potential reasons why and discuss how to reverse the trend heading in 2022. 1. Page Experience, Site Speed, and Core Web VitalsThe first phase of Google’s Page Experience Update had a three-month rollout this past summer, concluding in early September. This update rewards secure & fast-loading pages on mobile devices which pass Core Web Vitals requirements as described by Google. While the search impact thus far has been largely flat, we’ve seen numerous websites in competitive verticals lose mobile traffic throughout the update. Further, Google has announced they are bringing this update to desktop search results in the first quarter of 2022, presenting an opportunity to improve existing site performance while staying ahead of future updates. If you lost mobile SEO traffic in late summer and failed the new requirements, it may be worthwhile spending time improving your site’s Page Experience and Core Web Vitals metrics. Not sure where to begin? Google has recently updated their PageSpeed Insights and Lighthouse tools which can help you better understand specific causes of slow site speed and pinpoint Core Web Vitals failures. Search Console offers additional insight regarding your website’s performance, and WebPageTest.org can help developers get a deeper look at the situation. It’s important to note this is largely a page-level update, so webmasters will need run diagnostics at the URL level. For larger websites, this can present a significant time investment and may be why Google gave such advance notice of this update. To help diagnose more quickly, begin by analyzing your website’s pages on a template or page-type level to uncover solutions that can likely be applied to all pages of that page type and template. Taking things a step further, it may be worth utilizing cloud hosting services like AWS or Cloudflare for your website. These solutions have built-in speed and security optimizations that can help your site load more quickly on desktop and mobile devices. You may also choose to hire a professional who can make a complex technical project more approachable for you & your developers. 2. Being authentic and serving your usersThe latest version of Google’s Search Quality Guidelines refines their guidance for content quality, especially pertaining to YMYL industries (finance, healthcare, e-commerce, and so on). We’ve seen content quality consistently be a key indicator of how your website will perform throughout a Core Update, so it’s always a good idea to stay on top of Google’s recommended best practices and produce content that meets your users’ needs – especially as compared to your competitors. If you lost SEO visibility during June, July, or November, a Core Algorithm update could be the reason, and it’s likely a lack of content quality or a poor user experience may be reasons why. When analyzing your site’s content, it’s important to ask yourself:
3. Link spam & guest blog postsQuality, relevant backlinks are still a strong indicator of how well a site will rank, and obtaining natural links remains one of the most challenging areas of SEO to get right. Google has a long history of taking action against unnatural links, and we’ve seen the search engine continue to filter out links they believe violate their webmaster guidelines in 2021. Google rolled out their latest “Link Spam” Update in July, which specifically targets links from guest blog posts, affiliate links, and links within sponsored content. Why are they focusing on filtering links from these areas? These link tactics scale incredibly well but are often low-value and low-effort. They form easily detectable unnatural link patterns and pose a long-term risk. This update reminds us of something we’ve seen over and over throughout the years: when a link-building approach becomes too popular, Google will eventually take action. No surprise here, Google is algorithmically filtering out links fitting these criteria. If you experienced a drop in rankings during late July and know you may have these types of links in your backlink profile, it’s very likely some of those links which once helped you rank are no longer providing any value. If you haven’t already, a backlink audit and disavow may be in order, but proceed with caution – even Google acknowledges you can do more damage disavowing links if you don’t know what to look for. This includes relying on software to quickly identify “toxic” links; automated solutions are never a substitution for human review for such an important ranking factor. So what can you do to replace lost link equity? It’s important to keep in mind that natural link acquisition can be THE most effective part of your SEO strategy. Earning natural links from trusted websites, industry publications, and media outlets will provide safe, effective, and long-lasting results. Acquiring these types of links on a regular basis relies on the quality of your content and its audience, so the best approach marries your outreach strategy with your content plan and editorial calendar. Wrapping things up2021 has been a challenging year for many of us. Losing traffic during this time has many potential causes but also presents opportunities to better focus your SEO efforts heading into 2022. Taking a holistic approach to your SEO efforts across technical, content, links, speed, and UX factors will help put you in the best possible position to recover your rankings and reduce the risk of being negatively affected by a Google update moving forward. The post Lost SEO traffic in 2021? Here are 3 potential reasons why (and how to recover your rankings heading into 2022) appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3d4CDBi The post 20211130 SEL Brief appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3lkXcy7 Marketers spend billions of dollars in paid search deployed across tens of thousands of local campaigns. The challenge is dealing with all the complexity that creeps in while managing those campaigns across multiple locations alongside multiple affiliates, media partners, and agencies. In this webinar, join Adthena and learn how to drive performance from your campaigns while reducing waste through ineffective local campaigns. And as a bonus, do it in less time with more confidence. You’ll hear about the challenges that Adthena customers have faced and the steps they took to forge ahead. Register today for “2 Lights to Guide Your Google Paid Search Path to Success in 2022,” presented by Adthena. The post Find your Google paid search path to success in 2022 appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3rqspUt Online consumer spend in the U.S. came in at $5.1 billion on Thanksgiving Day, showing flat YoY growth, and Black Friday generated $8.9 billion, which is slightly less than the $9 billion it generated in 2020, according to Adobe. Thanksgiving weekend sales also failed to outperform last year’s figures, although consumer spend is expected to achieve 10% YoY growth for the overall shopping season. Adobe’s data comes from analyzing direct consumer transactions online. Projections are based on an analysis of over one trillion visits to U.S. retail sites, 100 million SKUs and 18 product categoriess. Why we care. Cyber Week sales are struggling to meet last year’s levels, but that might be okay because, “With 21 days in November driving over $3 billion in spend, what we know as Cyber Week is starting to look more like Cyber Month,” said Taylor Schreiner, director at Adobe Digital Insights. For reference, last November, only 8 days topped $3 billion by November 28, 2020. Supply chain issues, labor shortages, new consumer behaviors and even a Google core update the week before Thanksgiving — many variables could be affecting how retailers performed this Cyber Week. Because of these factors, businesses may fall short of their Cyber Week goals. However, Adobe still expects the full season (November 1 to December 31) to reach $207 billion (10% YoY growth). With that in mind, it may be better to assess sales over a longer period, perhaps beginning at the start of November, to get a clearer picture of how your campaigns and promotions did this holiday season. This may also enable better YoY comparisons since customers seem to be shopping much earlier this year. Thanksgiving and Black Friday. Actual Thanksgiving and Black Friday online consumer spend came in at the low end of Adobe’s predictions: Consumers spent $5.1 billion on Thanksgiving Day (the same as in 2020). On Black Friday, consumers spent $8.9 billion, which is actually less than in 2020, when consumers spent $9 billion. For reference, Thanksgiving Day drove $4.2 billion in online spend just two years ago (2019). However, this is the first time Adobe has reported decreased spending on major shopping days since it first began reporting on e-commerce in 2012. Thanksgiving weekend. Online sales slumped even harder over the weekend than they did during Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday: On Saturday, November 27, consumers spent $4.5 billion online, down 4.3% YoY. On Sunday, November 28, they spent $4.7 billion online, which was also down YoY but by a much narrower margin, 0.5%. On November 27 and 28, the prevalence of out-of-stock messages rose 16% compared to the prior weekend (November 20 and 21). Supply chain concerns may have contributed to inventory shortages, which could help explain the sales slowdown. But, it is also possible that customers adjusted their behavior to shop earlier to avoid potential inventory shortages or to take advantage of sales earlier in the season: Between November 1 and November 28, consumers spent $99.1 billion, up 13.6% YoY. And, this season, there have been 21 days exceeding $3 billion in online sales, compared to just 8 days that exceeded that amount by this time last year. The Cyber Monday outlook. Inventory issues and new, earlier consumer shopping patterns are also impacting Adobe’s Cyber Monday projections: Consumers will spend between $10.2 billion and $11.3 billion on Cyber Monday, Adobe predicted. If actual sales meet those expectations, then Cyber Monday will likely be the biggest online shopping day of 2021, although it may retain that title without necessarily exceeding last year’s figure of $10.8 billion. Cyber Monday discounts are also expected to be weaker than last year. Discount levels have fallen across several product categories, Adobe said: TVs are seeing discounts of -16% (compared to -19% in 2020), apparel is discounted at -15% (-20% last year), computers are at -14% (-28% last year) and appliances are at -8% (-20% last year). The post Cyber Week may be giving way to Cyber Month, according to Adobe appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3xx6mMM |
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