Google has published a list of best practices to help ensure that its search engine understands the products that are being referenced. The list contains an explanation of how Google identifies products, as well as tips for manufacturers, retailers and publishers. How Google identifies products. Google recommends using Global Trade Item Numbers (GTINs), Manufacturer Part Numbers (MPNs) and brand names when referencing products. This helps the search engine more accurately identify products and match them to offers and relevant searches. When using product identifiers, Google recommends the following:
Advice for brands and manufacturers. To help Google identify products, it recommends that brands and manufacturers use its Manufacturer Center to submit product data. Adhering to the following tips can help Google make the most out of the data you submit:
Advice for retailers. Retailers can follow the practices below to ensure Google can properly identify their products.
Advice for publishers. Some publishers create content based on products, such as reviews or tutorials. It’s also important for those content creators to accurately identify the products their content is about.
Why we care. Making it easier for search engines and marketplaces to identify your products will also make it easier for potential customers to discover and therefore purchase those products. This is helpful for users at every point of the funnel: If they’re using broad search terms, providing search engines with accurate product data can help them match your product to the query. If they’re looking specifically for your products, this information can also be used to build out your product knowledge panel, which could help them make a purchasing decision. The post How to identify your products for Google appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3pXHLLH
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“The content on our platform is about you and what you want in your life,” explained Colleen Stauffer, Global Director of Creator Marketing for Pinterest. “We really tried to harness planning that became way more short-term last year during the pandemic. We wanted to fit people in their current lives and how they planned in the hour.” The pandemic didn’t just change our lives out in the real world, it changed digital lives as well. It modified the demands users placed on familiar tools. For marketers, taking note of these shifts on social media platforms is essential. For the architects of these communities, the trends cut deep into human experience. Before the pandemic, Stauffer was aware of the tendency for users (called “Pinners”) to be “future-looking” in the content they sought out. They might be planning a vacation, or maybe they were redesigning a room in their home. With the pandemic, those same people were now searching out short-term solutions. What quick meal could they prepare just before a work-from-home meeting, while their child did remote learning on the family laptop? As a quick response last March, Pinterest moved up the launch of their Today tab. The feature allowed users to get quick updates from reputable sources like the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization. Users could also find kid-friendly baking recipes and recommended movies to fill all the downtime indoors. Powering up creatorsIn addition to helping their audience navigate a stressful time, Pinterest has also taken steps to grow and strengthen its community. Often, they have done so to distinguish themselves from other platforms like Instagram or YouTube, instead of following standard social media practice. On Pinterest, there is following and sharing, but for years they’ve emphatically denied that they are social media. They define themselves as visual discovery. What they call themselves isn’t as important as what they help members of their community do. And this is important for marketers because last summer Pinterest topped 400 million monthly active users. It’s growing among millennials and Gen Zers, including a 50% boost year-over-year for men on the platform. Strengthening Pinterest’s creator base powers the entire community and makes it even more valuable to brands. The moves Pinterest is making in this direction show how users and their preferences have changed. At the end of September, Pinterest introduced Story Pins, the ability for creators to tell multi-page stories. This beta version also included a new creator profile and analytics tools to track performance. Pinterest is also giving creators access to analytics across the community through its trends tool. At the heart the new Story Pins format is a wager against how other digital stories are told. For instance, the stories on Instagram expire after 24 hours. On Pinterest, they stay where they are. This feature leverages the evergreen value in Pinterest content, allowing Pinners to discover and rediscover what might have been overlooked in the past. With the new beta Story Pins, creators can also publish directly to Pinterest. Also, Pinners can browse and then message creators directly within the platform via the new profile. “Creators want the content to live in one place,” Stauffer said. “Creating content directly on Pinterest has been a need for our Pinners. They want to find an amazing food creator, see their Story Pin, and get the recipe, all within our ecosystem.” Influencing and shoppingWhile creators and their followers get to engage with the created content all in one place, the environment also gains ecommerce potential. Insider projects that in 2021, social commerce sales will surpass $36 billion in the U.S. alone. (The 2020 U.S. social commerce market was estimated at just under $30 billion.) Already this year, Pinterest is taking steps to make its platform more shoppable, including through Story Pins. Currently it has integrated an augmented reality try-on feature for some beauty products. It turns out that Pinners who use this feature are five times more likely to show purchase intent. According to Stauffer, 89% of weekly Pinners use Pinterest for inspiration in their path to purchase, confirming the influencing potential of creators. Additionally, 83% of weekly users have made a purchase based on Pinterest content. “Pinterest is a visual discovery platform and every time Pinners see a product they like, they should be able to buy it, or something like it, based on their unique taste,” Stauffer said. “That’s our vision for shopping with Pinterest. We have launched shopping products that bring shopping everywhere across the platform, including our Verified Merchant Program and our partnership with Shopify, where brands can easily upload their product feeds and turn them into shoppable Pins.” She added, “In the coming months we’ll be introducing product tagging for Story Pins so creators can tag specific products within their Story Pins and reach people in a mindset to plan and shop.” Next-level influencing for Pinterest creatorsSo what does the future of influencing on Pinterest look like? Fashion designer Peter Som took to Pinterest to broaden his knowledge of food and mixology. He has close to 3 million Pinners following him. In a test campaign over the holidays, Pinterest paired Som with a Diageo spirits brand, Tanqueray. He mixed up cocktails with three variants of the gin to show the versatility of the brand. Outside of the food category, Pinterest also activated sponsored Story Pins for IKEA. With a more robust influencer community added onto its already highly engaged community of creators and Pinners, the platform will be competitive in the emerging social commerce market. Pinterest’s future-looking behavior can also provide hope for relief in stressful times. According to Stauffer, the Pinners are starting to search for vacations again. This story first appeared on MarTech Today. The post Pinterest powers up creators during stressful times appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3su4D78 We’re all guilty of it at some point. I know I certainly am. Glamorizing writing is an easy trap to... The post 21 Useful Keyboard Shortcuts for Writers appeared first on Copyblogger. via Copyblogger https://ift.tt/3bM3AJb 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, or has it been a long night? Are you up all night worrying about your Core Web Vital scores? Can’t sleep because the Google Page Experience Update is just around the corner? Well, go back to bed, it will be alright! I get it but we’ve been through updates like these before. Remember Mobilegeddon, maybe the HTTPS update, or the intrusive interstitials penalty and many like it? They all turned out to not be a huge update that really impacted rankings that much at all. In fact, Danny Sullivan of Google said on Twitter, “It shouldn’t be the case that overnight, we flip some type of switch and there’s a massive change.” He admitted “that’s not typically how rollouts of this nature (such as speed, mobile-friendliness) have worked.” Relevance will rank supreme: “While all of the components of page experience are important, we will rank pages with the best information overall, even if some aspects of page experience are subpar. A good page experience doesn’t override having great, relevant content. However, in cases where there are multiple pages that have similar content, page experience becomes much more important for visibility in Search,” Google wrote. So really, do not lose sleep over this, everything will be fine. Yes, tackle the Core Web Vital issues that are most serious. Ultimately having a good user experience on your site will help with conversions, site revenues and happier website visitors. But I wouldn’t bank on it giving you a noticeable ranking boost or even a noticeable ranking decline. Barry Schwartz, Facebook updates Ads Manager for SMBsFacebook launched their “Good Ideas Deserve To Be Found” initiative yesterday to help SMBs with more personalized ads. With more local businesses moving online due to the pandemic, the goal is to help make social media marketing more accessible. Updates for SMBs include the following:
Google Search featured snippets may be bouncing backYesterday we reported that Google may be showing fewer featured snippets in its search results. The decline started after February 18th, but it seems like at least one tool is showing a bounce back as of February 25th. RankRanger shows that as of February 25th, Google is now showing about the same level of featured snippets as it once did prior to the decline on February 18th. This might be a blip in the data or it might be our report triggered Google to fix some sort of bug. We are not sure, but maybe the featured snippets you lost are coming back? Why doesn’t Google announce deprecating search ranking signals?Deprecating search ranking signals. Google’s John Mueller said Google generally does not announce when it deprecates search ranking factors or signals. But is that true? They did with rel next/prev, Google News stock tickers and genre and meta keywords, authorship, also told us when you stop using MapReduce and some other things. Google update to Display and Video 360 API. Google announced an update to its Display and Video 360 API. Some of the new features include anew insertion order targeting service and bulk list method enabling the retrieval of insertion order targeting, additional output-only fields mp3Audio and oggAudio for third-party audio creatives and support for more performance goal types to assign to insertion orders and campaigns, including click and impression conversion rate performance goals. We’ve curated our picks from across the web so you can retire your feed reader.
The post Don’t lose sleep over the Page Experience Update and more; Friday’s daily brief appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2ZWqpnC 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, and let’s chat ch-ch-changes, It seems like Google has announced change after change these past few weeks, especially on the Ads side. Most PPC marketers understand the move is toward automation, but the constant updates can make it hard to keep up. The new Partner Program details were released this week. Google is getting rid of Showcase Shopping Ads. The political ad ban was lifted (including Shopping ads). RSAs are now the default. And, of course, the transition of BMM keywords to phrase-match. Plus, the Google Ads outage probably didn’t help anyone’s stress level. You get the picture. It’s all part of the game, at this point, though. In fact, I think so many search marketers enjoy the industry so much because the ever-evolving nature of it is almost like a puzzle. It’s engaging. It keeps us sharp. It feels like such a success when we really get it right. As Sean Healy, Head of PPC at Jaywing told us, “Remaining responsive and adaptable is the key to making sure your PPC strategy continues to be the best value for your brand.” And paid search marketers are showing themselves to be the most adaptable. Carolyn Lyden, Google set to deprecate Showcase Shopping ads on April 1If you’re using Showcase Shopping Ads, they’re going to move to product Shopping ad groups as of April 1. You’ll still have access to performance data, but Google will remove your Showcase ads and ad groups as part of the change. Showcase Shopping ads were the standard Shopping format for broad queries. As such, “I would just suggest monitoring Shopping ads for a few weeks after the change, since it is possible advertisers could see an influx of top-of-funnel placements,” Kirk Williams of ZATO Marketing told Search Engine Land. Additionally, advertisers reliant on these ads may have to revisit their strategies once it disappears. It’s unclear whether Smart Shopping campaigns will fill the void left by Showcase ads, but hopefully Google will provide an update on that in the weeks between now and April 1. Google Search may be showing featured snippets less oftenMultiple SERP tracking tools have noted that Google seems to be showing fewer featured snippet results. Each tool tracks different sets of keywords, but the decline is consistent across them all. For search marketers whose sites receive a decent amount of traffic from featured snippets, this could be a big deal and result in traffic drops. It’s worth annotating in your Google Analytics in case you start to see fluctuations sessions. It also potentially means more competitions for the featured snippets that are still showing, so make certain your structured data is accurate and up to par. What digital advertising gets wrongYour ads may not be as effective as you think. After all, how many of those conversions are coming from people who would’ve bought from you anyway? That’s the premise behind Sinan Aral’s article for the Harvard Business Review. Aral focuses on distinguishing lift (ads that cause behavioral change) and conversion rate. Targeting people who are more likely to buy your goods or services may result in wasting budget and annoying customers with redundant ads. “Unless the targeting is directed at customers who aren’t already prepped to buy the products, the conversion from click to cash will not generate any new revenue,” Aral said. A few years ago, Procter & Gamble and Unilever overhauled their PPC strategies and took a scalpel to their budgets, decreasing them by 6% and 30%, respectively. Their strategy worked: P&G’s organic sales growth increased 7.5% in 2019 and Unilever gained by 3.8%. “The improvements were made possible because both companies also shifted their media spend from a previous narrow focus on frequency — measured in clicks or views — to one focused on reach, the number of consumers they touched,” said Aral. So, if your campaigns are stagnating or you’re just looking to increase efficiency, dig into the data to assess who you’re targeting and start experimenting. Twitter trends: How brands can reactSome brands are absolutely nailing it on Twitter. See Wendy’s, Ben & Jerry’s, No Name Brands, HeyBippy, and Fazoli’s to name a few. In a recently released trends report, Twitter highlights 6 big trends on the social media platform and how brands can act on them. To help brands stay aware of current buzz on Twitter, the report recommends focusing on the following topics for your social media strategy:
The report discusses the data behind the trends and ways that brands can take part in the conversations in genuine and meaningful ways. For example, Twitter has noted a 53% increase in conversations around clean corporations and holding businesses accountable “as people feel increasingly empowered to demand more from businesses.” Some of the conversations that are shaping the topic include green design, sustainable packaging, and youth activism. In the “How brands can act” section, the report dives into ways to build awareness around each trend, like recommending green businesses “Identify ways to lead — from eco-conscious innovation and corporate accountability to renewed focus on nature.” Each section also includes relevant ways to connect and become part of the conversation as well as the most commonly used hashtags around the topic. It’s worth a download and conversation for any social media team. Ban lifted on Shopping Ads, core web vitals spam and work at Bing.Page Experience Update spam. Google’s Malte Ubl said he won’t be talking about spam prevention for the upcoming Page Experience Update and core web vitals hacks. He said on Twitter “I’m definitely concerned about abuse. But I will not say what if anything we are doing to address it as this is naturally a cat and mouse game.” Political Shopping Ads. Google lifted the ban on political ads yesterday and clarified that the restriction also no longer extends to Shopping Ads: “We no longer consider the US 2020 elections-related events to be a sensitive event.” Join Microsoft Bing Search. Microsoft is hiring a new PM for Microsoft Bing Search. Frederic Dubut from Microsoft said on Twitter “Job Opportunity! I’m looking for a PM to join the Bing search ranking team, arguably the leading applied ML team Microsoft. It’s a nice mid-level, hybrid Product/TPM position, perfect for someone with a couple of years of experience and lots of headroom to grow.” We’ve curated our picks from across the web so you can retire your feed reader.
The post More Google Ads changes and SERP fluctuations; Thursday’s daily brief appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3dTxOwa Knowledge is power. It is also a pain when you learn upsetting facts about things you love. For technical SEOs, JavaScript is a hot topic and will continue to be one for quite some time. When it comes to rendering JS on a website, there are a few options for the best way to tackle this problem. Today, we are going to focus on one of those: server-side rendering. What is server-side rendering?Let’s start by defining “rendering.” Rendering is the process of retrieving a web page, launching the code, and assessing the structure and design of a page. Rendering can occur in a number of ways; client-side, server-side, and dynamic. Server-side rendering (SSR) is the process of rendering your web pages through your own servers. In client-side rendering (CSR), this process is completed through the user’s browser, while dynamic rendering occurs through a third-party server. There are two versions of your web page with SSR: the initial HTML and the rendered HTML, known as the DOM (direct object model). Google is only able to access the rendered HTML. This means it is critical that key elements and content have been rendered in order to receive “credit” from the search engine. What are the benefits of server-side rendering?There will always be pros and cons for all of the rendering options. It is up to the SEO and engineering teams to review these and decide which path is the best based on resources. From a search engine perspective, server-side rendering is the second-best option for rendering JS. The biggest benefit is the rate at which pages can be rendered. The faster search engines can “view’ your pages, the faster it can move on to the next page and improve your crawl budget. Not only does your crawl budget improve, but your user experience also increases. Another benefit of SSR is that you can ensure all of your page elements are rendering. When you rely on a browser, you are reliant upon their technology. An older machine that may not be able to process large resources could result in partial rendering. This means crucial content elements or information might be missing, and Google cannot give you “credit” for those elements. This creates a bad UX. It may also impact search engines’ ability to rank pages that were missing important information. What are the pitfalls of server-side rendering?While server-side rendering is great for crawl budget and site speed, it does have a pretty big barrier: it is very expensive. Because the website is being rendered on your company servers, there are costs associated with that process. Where CSR forces the user to “pay” this cost, SSR has your company foot that bill. If you want to move to SSR, this cost may be a roadblock. The other drawback of SSR is that it cannot render third-party JavaScript such as reviews, UGC, product recommendation engines, or anything that injects content that is not part of your static HTML. These links and content pieces will not be present. This could impact internal linking or even overall page quality. If the majority of your content is UGC injected by a service, it won’t be visible to bots. What is static SSR?If you have been looking into the case for server-side rendering, you may have come across the term “static SSR.” This is slightly different than SSR in that these pages are rendered at the time they are built. For SSR, these pages are only rendered when they are called by a user (or bot). There are benefits to static SSR in regards to fast time-to-first-byte (TTFB) and first contentful bite (FCB). Site speed is crucial to SEO and user experience. The cons for static SSR is that it can be inflexible and lead to hydration (the process of injecting JS to the static HTML via CSR). Does SSR help Core Web Vitals?At the center of every SEOs world right now is Core Web Vitals (CWV). These three little words are our new Mobile-First Index. Our world is changing, again and now is the time to adapt. In regards to SSR, yes, it can help your CWV. Because pages are rendered on your site, there is an improvement in site speed, specifically as it relates to Largest Contentful Paint (LCP). We know that we have to meet the criteria across three metrics; LCP is one. A fast LCP means you are one-third the way to hitting those new targets. What do search engines think of SSR?A search engine’s priority is meeting its user’s needs. Are they recommending the content that is relevant to a query? In order for search engines to meet this goal, they need to be able to crawl the whole internet. As of February 11, 2021, there were over 5.65 billion web pages. The amount of work it takes to crawl that many pages is no easy task. Search engines rely on websites to use the most current technology and recommendation to help them help you. SSR is one of the best ways to help bots crawl your site. Google is encouraging developers to go one step further by using dynamic rendering to further increase the rate at which they can crawl the internet. How to confirm SSR is rendering pages properly?Congratulations, you have successfully implemented server-side rendering! Now, how do you know if it is working? There are a number of tools that you can use to help aid that research.
JavaScript-built websites aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. As SEOs, it has become our responsibility to help developers and leadership understand the impact of how you handle JS on your website. Your company is investing hundreds of thousands of dollars to build a functional website. If the search engines can’t render that content, it becomes a loss to the company. There are a lot of options when it comes to how you render your JS. Each has its pros and cons that must be weighted. The more we understand how these tasks are accomplished and how they impact our overall SEO strategy, the better we are at making a case for a change. The power of knowledge is in your hands – now use it for good. The post Server-side rendering: What SEOs need to understand appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3sqVpsd Starting around February 18, 2021, Google seems to be showing fewer featured snippet results in the search results page. Most, if not all, of the tools that track the Google search results, are showing significant declines in featured snippets showing up. What the tools show. All of the tools that track featured snippets in Google’s search results showed a decline in how often they show up starting after February 18tth. Moz is showing a decline: RankRanger is showing a decline: SEMRush is showing a decline: SEOClarity is showing a decline: Each of these tools track different sets of keywords and featured snippets but they are all showing declines. Why it matters. If your site gets a lot of traffic from featured snippets in Google Search, this may impact your traffic. Keep an eye on your analytics, check to see if your top performing featured snippets are still showing up. If Google is not showing any featured snippet and you still rank number one for the query, you are probably okay. But if you rank lower, you might want to make sure to add appropriate and relevant structured data so Google richens up your result and you can get more clicks. This may be a bug and Google may start showing these featured snippets again or this may be an intentional change on Google’s end. We do not know but we do know there was a change to how often certain categories of search results in Google will show featured snippets. The post Google Search may be showing featured snippets less often appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3spEiac Google will stop serving Showcase Shopping ads and remove Showcase Shopping ad groups beginning on April 1, the company stated in an email to advertisers sent on February 23. After April 1, previous Showcase Shopping ad layouts will become part of Product Shopping ad groups. Advertisers will retain access to performance data for removed ads and ad groups in their account reports. Tip of the hat to Kirk Williams for bringing this to our attention. The history of the format. Google has previously said that approximately 40% of product searches are for broad terms. Showcase Shopping ads, which were first introduced for search in 2016 as a multi-image Shopping format, were intended to provide retailers with a way to “showcase” a curated group of products, and mostly surfaced for broad, non-branded searches, like “summer dresses” (in the example above). In 2018, Google added video to Showcase Shopping ads in search. The following year, the format was extended to Google Images, the Discover feed and YouTube feed. And, in March 2020, Showcase Shopping ads became eligible to show in Gmail. Prior to that, Smart Shopping campaigns were the only way to get Shopping ads into Gmail. Why we care. After April 1, Showcase Shopping ads will be included in Product Shopping ad groups. “I would just suggest monitoring Shopping ads for a few weeks after the change, since it is possible advertisers could see an influx of top-of-funnel placements (since Showcase ads tended to be top-of-funnel),” said Kirk Williams, owner of ZATO Marketing. As the change rolls out, advertisers that were reliant on Showcase ads may have to revisit their strategies. “We did see it drive sales and so we’re losing out on that,” said Duane Brown, founder of PPC marketing agency Take Some Risk, “It means we need to see if we can get more sales from somewhere else in ad accounts.” The removal of Showcase ads may also leave a gap for some advertisers. “Looking forward, the one thing that is not clear is whether Smart Shopping campaigns will now cover the placements previously covered only by Showcase ads,” Williams said, adding that he hopes Google will provide further clarification in the weeks to come. The post Google set to deprecate Showcase Shopping ads on April 1 appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/381k2UT Back when I worked in the corporate world, I used to get called naive at least once a week. I... The post Why Being Naive Can Make Your Fortune appeared first on Copyblogger. via Copyblogger https://ift.tt/3qSCKoO Good morning, Marketers, the first SMX conference of the year certainly set a high standard. There’s a particular feeling you get when attending an industry conference; something along the lines of, “This is a lot of information. I hope I can make the most of it all. I NEED to ask that speaker a question after this session.” I felt those same feelings at SMX Report yesterday. Though, I was able to pull myself together and jot down a few outstanding quotes from our speakers. Check it out in the Heard at SMX section below. There’s so much more beyond those takeaways, like the keynote from our own Carolyn Lyden, featured speaker Colleen Harris’ talk on using Google Analytics data to map digital strategy success, and more. If you’re interested, you can still catch the sessions on-demand by registering right here. George Nguyen Check out some of our main takeaways from SMX Report
Watch the on-demand sessions here. Advertisers have until February 2022 to adjust to Google’s new Partner Program requirementsJust over a year ago, Google raised the bar for its Partners program, doubling the 90-day spend threshold and requiring half of users with admin or standard access to pass relevant certification tests. Little did any of us know, the pandemic was right around the corner, and Google postponed the changes until 2021. Now, the company is postponing once again to February 2022. It also integrated the following feedback from Partners:
Nearly a year after the pandemic first upended everything, we’re still dealing with it, so this announcement may provide some much needed breathing room. Yelp’s Waitlist, analytics and POS updates aim to address shifting consumer preferencesYesterday, Yelp expanded its Waitlist feature to support takeout as well as dine-in customers. Hosts can use Waitlist to input takeout orders, add supporting details and text customers when their food is ready, which can help everyone maintain social distance throughout the process. The platform also rolled out enhanced analytics for multi-location restaurants. Metrics include number of customers seated, number of customers seated via Yelp, seating conversion rates (the percentage of Waitlist parties that were eventually seated) and wait time accuracy. Guest profiles and a new POS integration facilitate front end operations by auto-filling customer info and updating hosts when a check is paid, but they also provide marketers who work for restaurants with data on the amount spent, what was ordered and who the server was. Yelp says these two features also support targeted marketing opportunities, but did not provide more details in its announcement. Instead of attempting to reach parity with Google My Business, Yelp’s latest features update seeks to differentiate by pulling it into a SaaS-like direction, while bolstering the platform’s revenue stream outside of advertising. I think businesses that compete with Google, such as online travel agencies or other search engines, need to add values in ways that Google can’t. But then again, they’re probably doing just that; it’s just harder to generate awareness when you’re constantly in Google’s shadow — perhaps Yelp’s growing list of SaaS features will help it step out of that shadow. Down for everyone or just me? Google Ads Manager outage yesterdayGoogle Ads saw a short outage yesterday. According to the Status Dashboard, the platform was experiencing issues beginning Monday. Search marketers convened on Twitter to make sure it wasn’t just them. Some were eventually able to log in, but were met with the notification, “You do not have any Google Ads accounts. Would you like to create a new one?” Sure to make any PPC professional’s heart jump to their throat! The issue was resolved just before 4pm yesterday, but it caused quite a few nervous tweets–and some jokingly speculating if it was related to the new Partner Program update. Google algorithm update, shards, mobile-first indexing and redirectsWeekend Google ranking update. Since the weekend, some in the SEO industry have been noticing ranking fluctuations in Google Search. This is not a confirmed update and the chatter and signs are not as strong as most of these updates but there may have been a Google search ranking update rolling out since the weekend. Serving index and shards. In the latest Search Off the Record podcast episode from Google, Gary Illyes spoke about Google’s serving index in somewhat detail. It gives you a fundamental understanding on how Google surfaces what you see in the search results, there is also some talk of shards, not sharks. Mobile first indexing March deadline. As the deadline approaches for the mobile-first indexing switch over this coming March, we are getting ready for the switch over for the sites not yet moved over. But don’t think it will all happen on one specific day. John Mueller of Google said on Twitter “that’s approximately the target. We don’t have a critical reason to reach any particular cut-off date, so it could be that the remaining sites are a bit spread out, some earlier, some a little bit later.” Too many redirects. Google does not have a penalty for having too many redirects, said Google’s John Mueller. We’ve curated our picks from across the web so you can retire your feed reader
The post A few pointers from the pros during SMX Report; Wednesday’s daily brief appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3dCoEnU |
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