As marketers adapt to meet shifting consumer behaviors and new market demands, search plays a critical role in digital marketing strategies. Paid search advertising has always been a stalwart of performance in economic downturns. Brands that invest efficiently in search during challenging times are positioned better to increase market share, expand into new categories and enter new markets. Search Engine Land’s Editor in Chief, Ginny Marvin, and Adthena’s VP of Marketing, Ashley Fletcher, will discuss why search continues to hold MVP status in today’s “new normal” and how to use search to inform your organization’s broader marketing strategy into 2021. Don’t miss this webinar! Register today for “How to Make Search the Driving Force in This ‘New Normal’ ,” presented by Adthena. The post How to make Search the driving force in this ‘new normal’ appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3jdLe5Q
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The post SEL 20200827 appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2QxHXBT See how visits to retail grocery workplaces are trending by area with Google Mobility Reports8/27/2020 Google’s COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports show how visits and length of stay in various place categories have changed compared to a baseline period before the pandemic. The reports, which are published on an ongoing basis, illustrate movement trends over time with respect to geography (including country, state and county) over a six-week period, with the most recent data representing approximately 2-3 days ago (the amount of time it takes to produce the reports). Place categories. Community Mobility Reports present trends in the following place categories:
The categories bundle together destinations with similar characteristics for the purpose of social distancing guidance. For example, grocery and pharmacy are grouped together because they tend to be essential trips. Each category may contain many types of places and Google publishes trends for the above categories because they are useful for social distancing efforts and access to essential services. What the baseline refers to. The baseline refers to the median day-value between January 3 and February 6, 2020. Essentially, it represents a “normal” value for that particular day of the week. Therefore, the baseline is actually seven distinct values (one for each day of the week). The baseline days never change and also do not account for seasonality. Google recommends that users calibrate for their region before analyzing the data by keeping the following questions in mind:
The considerations above can help you interpret the data more accurately. For example, the chart below shows that visits to parks are up 46% compared to the baseline; however, January in Suffolk County, Massachusetts, tends to be frigid, which may discourage many visitors. The headline number (circled in red above) reflects the percent change for the report date, which appears at the top of the report. What it doesn’t show. The reports illustrate relative change, not absolute visitors or duration of stay. As mentioned above, the trends are relative to the baseline period and do not show year-over-year trends. Baselines are for their specific region-category, which should be kept in mind when comparing across regions. Gaps in trends lines are shown when Google did not have enough data to confidently and anonymously estimate the change from the baseline. How data is collected. Trends insights are created with aggregated, anonymized sets of data from users who have opted into Location History in their Google accounts (which is disabled by default). “As with all samples, this may or may not represent the exact behavior of a wider population,” Google says in the “About this data” section of each report. Apple’s got mobility trends, too. Apple also uses anonymized data to generate its own Mobility Trends Reports. However, Apple’s charts show driving, walking and transit trends, as opposed to breaking them down by place categories the way Google does. Why we care. Mobility data may be useful for local businesses to gauge how potential customers in their area are responding to the ongoing pandemic and policies aimed at combating it. Community Mobility Reports data for the entire U.S. also provides businesses with a snapshot of how people are moving and responding nationwide. More about marketing in the time of the coronavirus
The post See how visits to retail, grocery, workplaces are trending by area with Google Mobility Reports appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3ll078p Part of Google’s mobile search success relies on the fact that it’s the default search engine for the iPhone. The company has paid billions for that privilege over the years. But there’s evidence that Apple might be building a search engine to take on Google – for real this time. First the evidence. As Coywolf’s Jon Henshaw pointed out in a blog post, Apple has recently been listing more job announcements for search engineers (including for Apple Maps). Then there’s the apparent fact that, in iOS 14, Spotlight Search de-emphasizes or entirely bypasses Google results. The company has also updated its webcrawler support page (Applebot) with new information on how it ranks results. And Applebot has reportedly started to crawl sites more regularly. In Europe there has recently been a lot of antitrust and regulatory activity around default search on Android devices. Google was compelled to create a “search choice” screen for Android users upon setup of a new device. This has been controversial but is intended to give users the option to select an alternative to Google and boost the market share of rivals. This of course doesn’t mean it will happen. While there is search choice on the iPhone – Google, Bing, Yahoo or DuckDuckGo – the overwhelming majority of users don’t select one of those competitors. In 2013 Apple made Bing the default search engine for Siri but not for the Safari browser on the iPhone. Google replaced Bing as the source of web search results for Siri in 2017. Today, Bing and Yahoo combine for less than 5% of mobile search in the U.S. But given Google’s mobile search market share, roughly 95%, and the ongoing antitrust investigations in both Europe and the U.S., the company’s default search days on Safari are probably numbered. Why build a search engine? For the same reason that Apple ultimately launched a mapping application it might be inclined to launch a more full-blown search engine. It’s a strategic capability that Apple probably ultimately wants in order to better control the user experience and showcase content and apps on its mobile devices. Apple can also provide a “federated” or on-device and web search capability, which Google cannot on the iPhone. Google and Apple have historically been at odds over apps and their importance in the ecosystem. At one time Google saw apps as a threat, though that faded relatively quickly. Google initially decried mobile apps as the death of the open web and tried to do many things to promote mobile web usage instead. To some degree the AMP initiative is part of that, making sure that the mobile web experience isn’t completely inferior to the app experience. But both experiences co-exist and serve different user needs and use cases. How Apple search might impact competitors. This is speculative, but it’s quite possible that Apple could become the number two mobile search engine. Safari is the most popular mobile browser in the U.S.; Chrome is second. Yet it’s unclear how extensive or far reaching Apple’s search ambitions are. The search development here may be focused on Spotlight Search and not extend to Safari. Spotlight Search, which is accessed from the top of the iPhone homepage, is not as visible or widely used for web search compared with browsers or dedicated search apps (e.g., Google). But there’s a potentially more integrated experience where Siri results, Spotlight Search and the Safari browser default search become more unified on the back end if not in the UI. Search engines such as DuckDuckGo or the forthcoming subscription-based Neeva could suffer at the hands of a more comprehensive and robust Apple search experience. That’s because alternative search engines are mostly selling themselves these days on the basis of being more privacy friendly or, in Neeva’s case, also being ad-free. Apple has been heavily marketing privacy as a differentiator for its products and would be unlikely to have many if any ads in its search results. (Although, Apple is a public company seeking new sources of revenue growth, so it could be tempted over time.) Why it matters. In an industry focused almost entirely on Google it would be invigorating to have a strong new search competitor. And Google would likely welcome such a move for several reasons: it could stop paying billions to Apple and not suffer significantly and it could also point to Apple as a strong competitor in antitrust cases. But this very much remains to be seen, as well as the precise form a new Apple search engine would take. Apple does have an opportunity and the resources to make a run at Google but the question is, will it fully commit or build a mediocre experience that doesn’t sway anyone. The company underestimated the challenge of building a maps alternative to Google and learned some painful lessons in the process. The post Is Apple getting real about search and about to take on Google? appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/32qUjS0 Google has added new search developer documentation for the home activities structured data. Home activities structured data is primarily to be used for activities that you can do at home such as watching videos and online events. It appears in the Google Search results as special rich results. The rich results will give searchers more details on the video or online class that you offer, including more details such as a description of the activity, how to register or watch. What it looks like. Here is what it looks like in Google Search as a rich result: How can you see it. Google said that home activity rich results are “currently only available in English in the US” and only work on mobile searches right now. This is currently only showing up for fitness-related searches such as “online exercise” or “yoga at home”. The content types. Here are some examples of home activity content types that Google supports:
You can add the markup to your videos or events. Why we care. Rich results in Google Search can bring you more exposure and visibility. So even if you can not budge from position three to position one in Google Search, for example, having a richer result may bring the user’s eye to your richer result in position three If you have videos or events in this segment, it is probably worth trying out home activities structured data. The post Home activities structured data now supported by Google Search appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3htUVwt Google My Business (GMB) optimization has become critical for brands and small businesses alike as the gateway to offline and, increasingly, online conversions. Google Search and Maps (especially) are often the first points of contact for millions of consumers with businesses that have physical locations, as well as service-area businesses. Percentage of owner-verified listingsOne of the questions I’ve asked repeatedly over the past few years is “how many businesses have verified their listings on GMB?” Places Scout in 2019 analyzed 2.4 million business listings in over 30 categories and came up with an answer: 62.2%. A 2020 analysis of 800,000 listings by Whitespark found a lower number: 49%. The Places Scout study contains a wealth of valuable GMB benchmarking information. Here are some of the numbers. Basic profile informationAccording to the study, the average GMB profile is 72% complete. Sixty-one percent have business hours posted and 93% feature a business phone number. Seventy-three percent have a URL, but only 29% on average have a business description. The average description length is roughly 231 words. The average profile also features just over 45 images. Across the board, the most recent business-owner-added photo is more than 100 days old. This is noteworthy because more photos translate into more visibility and consumer engagement. Only 4.4% of profiles feature a menu link and a roughly equivalent number have a reservation/booking link (4.3%). This study was done before COVID-19 and I would expect these numbers to be higher today. Roughly 24% of profiles featured social media links. Reviews and response ratesThe average GMB profile had 73 reviews. The lowest category (wholesale) showed an average of 23 reviews. The category with the most review activity was travel and hospitality with 237. The average business star rating was 4.08. Only 19% of business owners responded to reviews. Of those responding, it took an average of more than 25 days. And, when they did respond, business owners only addressed 35% of those reviews, with slightly greater attention to negative reviews. Business owners received an average of 1.5 new reviews per month, according to the study. Google Posts and Q&APlaces Scout also found that only 13.4% of profiles used Google Posts. These profiles had slightly more than 5 Posts for the time period examined, with 3.2 Posts in the past month. Roughly a third of profiles (32.2%) had questions associated with them. The average number of questions was 3.1 per profile, 2.5 of which were answered. Local Guides answered roughly 1 out the 3 questions. In a small fraction of cases (0.17%) the owner both asked and answered their own questions — an often-recommended practice. It took most business owners an average of less than a day to respond to questions, which is more impressive than their review performance. Quick wins availableRoughly 90% of GMB profiles are single-location businesses. This means small businesses. But, many of the deficiencies identified in the study likely equally apply to multi-location enterprises. The data above show there are some basic optimizations readily available:
These are just a few optimizations revealed by Places Scout’s benchmarking study. There are many more, but these items are relatively simple and if businesses did them, they would see a near-term lift in visibility and conversions. RELATED: How to optimize your Google local Knowledge Panel The post The average GMB profile has 73 reviews, 45 photos, 5 Posts and a star rating of 4.08 appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/31tawqz Let’s say your site was flagged by Google search as having a security issue, be it malware or maybe your site appeared to be hacked. Google is now testing a feature to let you request that Google review the site and the specific security issue if you think Google mistakenly identified your site as having such a security issue. The announcement. “We’re piloting a new reporting system beginning with security issues,” Google said on Twitter. There is a new “Report a Security Issue” button on the security issues help page where site owners can report potential false positives or request a re-review of the security issue. What it looks like. Here is a screen shot of the button: Might not work for you. This is being tested right now and this feature might not work for you. “This reporting tool is currently only available to those coming from English-language help pages,” said Google. You also have to be signed into Google Search Console for this to work. Why we care. Well, remember that time this site, Search Engine Land, was removed from Google by mistake? A Google spokesperson said: “This was a case where our system misidentified the site as being hacked.” But, Google had to take notice and it took a while for the site to be restored in Google search. This feature will help sites that do not have more exposure or access to Google to hopefully rectify the issue faster and thus reduce any lost Google traffic due to a false positive security issue. The post Google tests reporting security issue false positives in Search Console appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3gvMNdu With more than 80 million customer calls a month being driven by Google search ads, there’s an enormous opportunity to leverage call analytics to maximize that engagement into conversions. The technology can also eliminate wastes of time, resources and money. “We’re talking about eliminating underperforming campaigns, those campaigns that are not driving the outcomes that you’re interested in,” said Bill Hyatt, senior director at call analytics provider Invoca, speaking at SMX Next. “We’re talking about suppressing unnecessary ad spend so that we’re not wasting our marketing budget.” Eliminating those campaigns can drive down cost-per-conversion, cost-per-lead, cost-per-sale and more, he said. Watch Invoca’s SMX Session: How Call Tracking Can Eliminate Waste In Your SEM Campaigns “Then we flip the page. How do we increase revenue?” Hyatt asked. “Well, leveraging the insights that we received from speech analytics and pushing those back into our digital marketing agenda, we can optimize marketing spend to drive more conversions. So we understand through the phone channel what’s driving conversion and focus in on those.” In practice, if a marketer understands “why someone’s calling, what they’re interested in, the context of that phone conversation, then I have a pretty good understanding of either the next best offer or next best action in that overall customer journey,” he said. Call analytics capabilitiesIn one example, Hyatt outlined how call analytics could integrate with a Google Ad campaign that directs people to a landing page with an application for something like a mortgage or auto loan. “As they come into the landing page through a campaign ad group set of keywords, you’re able to track applications that were submitted via that form. And you know how much, through Google Ads, that set of keywords is costing you, how many conversions [come in] through the application… and what your cost per conversion is,” he said. In that scenario, if the campaign cost was $10,000 and the company had 50 conversions, then the cost per conversion is $200. But some customers may prefer to speak to a lending officer or an advisor before filling out the form. With a call analytics platform, which can dynamically add unique phone numbers to the page, that interaction can also be tracked back to the action that drove the customer to call. “So, same scenario, same campaign ad group, same set of keywords, where a certain number of individuals converted through a form submit. Others chose, either through the web page to call directly from the page, or from a Google call extension to convert over the phone,” explained Hyatt. “So the 50 from the form submit plus another 50 over the phone. What we’re going to start seeing is a more normalized or true cost per conversion.” In this example case, we’d discover that our cost per conversion, instead of being $200, is actually $100. With this information, we can do a better job of allocating media dollars going forward. Expanding use casesCall analytics platforms have been adding features in the past few years as more marketers rely on them to gather actionable insights from their growing call volumes. In many cases, enhancements have leveraged new investments by vendors in adding AI to their platforms to drive real-time insights into their data. According to the lastest MarTech Today Martech Intelligence Report on call analytics platforms, overall these systems are used in the following ways:
Improving the experienceWhile Hyatt highlighted the cost savings and potential revenue growth tied to call analytics, it’s also important to focus on how these platforms affect the customer experience. “Now speaking of the customer, how do I enhance their customer experience, how do I make it easier for them to do business with us?” he asked. “Well, one way might be to intelligently route the call. If I understand, from the digital journey perspective, where they came into the website, what pages they viewed, what products or services they were interested in, then perhaps I could put them into the queue at the call center where there’s a specialized agent that can handle precisely what they’re interested in.” More from SMX NextThe post Call analytics: How they can drive down costs and improve search conversions appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3lh49yB In our ongoing coverage of Bing’s search ranking factors, which the company listed out when it published its new webmaster guidelines, I asked the search company about its indexing benchmarks: Does Bing index everything or does a site or a page have to meet a specific quality threshold for it to be indexed by Bing? This is from our interview with Microsoft’s Christi Olson and Fabrice Canal, on Live with Search Engine Land about What SEOs need to know about Bing Webmaster Guidelines. We already dug into the fact that Bing uses user engagement metrics in its search ranking factors and we did a deeper dive into some of Bing’s ranking factors. Now, we cover a topic I find interesting — whether Bing will index a page that does not meet a specific quality mark. What Bing does not want to indexCanal, principal program manager at Bing, Microsoft, said it is 100% the case that Bing does not want to index all the content on the web. “For instance, I will not index junk content,” Canal said. Examples of junk pages, he said, include “a completely empty page . . . a page with a completely broken experience, JavaScript errors,” he said Bing does not want to index it. Also, Bing does “not want to index ” spammy content or pages that have malicious activities on them, he said. In summary, Bing does not want to index:
Bing’s list of things to avoid“And that goes into the final section of the Webmaster Guidelines, things to avoid,” Christi Olson from Bing added, “So when sites have substantial amounts of the things to avoid, they could potentially get demoted or not indexed.” Here is Bing’s list of what to avoid:
The post Bing considers page quality before indexing appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3jeBp7E Back to school can often look different state by state and school district by school district, but one thing we know is this year’s back to school season will not be anything like what we have seen in the past. With COVID-19 cases increasing across the United States, states and local school districts are responding in various ways. Some are requiring masks and moving desks six feet apart, some are staggering days children come in person and many are opting to go fully virtual. Search is unique in that search queries offer a unique view into the people’s sentiment and what is top of mind. When it comes to back to school, with all these unknowns about the new school year, parents and teachers are turning to search to get advice, look for answers, shop for materials and find humor through the uncertainty. Here are some of the trends we are seeing: What is ‘virtual school’ anyway?Online education has been gaining popularity in the past few years, but traditional K-12 education still relied heavily on in-person instruction until COVID-19 rapidly accelerated virtual learning. Between March 1 and August 1, 2020, virtual schooling saw a 238% spike in searches, many of which were specific to geography, with state or school districts comprising most virtual school searches. Parents are trying to understand how virtual school works and how to best help their children succeed while learning virtually. Do I homeschool?Parents, students, and teachers have been faced with extraordinary challenges as education suddenly went from in-person to virtual overnight. As schools announce their virtual and in-person plans for the upcoming school year, more parents are researching homeschooling as an option. While parents consider their options for the fall, they are searching for homeschool schedules and curriculums to inform their decisions. Curriculum and schedule-related searches increased 2.9X from the beginning of July to the first week of August as more schooling plans were announced across the U.S. At the onset of COVID-19, ‘best homeschool’ searches spiked as parents were searching for guidance and information on how to best educate their children. They saw another spike in June and July as districts started announcing their back-to-school plans. Overall, ‘best homeschool’ searches have increased 90x the volume we saw before the onset of COVID-19. Help! We need a deskMany families found that they were not well equipped to have their children take part in school from home. While school transitioned to the home, parents started searching for the supplies necessary to make a virtual or hybrid school experience function at home. Searches for desks, for example, increased quickly over pre-COVID-19 levels. As we get closer to the new school year with many schools continuing to remain virtual, weekly desk searches are up 10X the volume of early January. While certain categories of school supplies are up, many of the traditional categories are seeing a drop in searches. For example, the first part of August typically sees a spike in backpack searches, and this year the volume is 50% lower than 2019. This whole school from home thing is hard, I need some humor. While likely balancing meltdowns, preparing balanced meals and trying to ensure continuity in their children’s education, parents have had a difficult time. I’ve seen a lot of parents in my social media feed sharing funny stories, jokes and memes. The searches we are seeing reflect that as well – parents want to share relatable humor to find relief and connection amidst the pandemic. Searches for homeschool and virtual school memes jumped 45X the volume at the onset of COVID-19 and now is around 20X the volume from the beginning of the year. Is school safe?In states that are resuming in-person school, parents are wondering what that will look like and if it is safe for their children. They have been researching the risks and cleaning procedures that schools will be following. Searches also show the concern of school-aged children spreading COVID-19 in older family members, with people searching ‘should high-risk adults let children go back to school’ and ‘should I see my grandkids after they go back to school’. We are seeing concern and anxiety in parents’ searches as they feel pressured to make the best decision regarding their child’s return to school. What’s the impact for advertisersWhile the world adapts to a new normal, consumers are turning to search to ask questions and fulfill intent. For back to school season, know that virtual and online schooling is top of mind, and parents are leveraging search to know and do more. As a result, according to Advertiser Perceptions research, marketers are planning to increase their spend this year on digital advertising in the back to school season, while prioritizing eCommerce strategies and flexibility. Advertisers have an opportunity to message parents and reach them with messaging that relates to that about which they’re thinking. Consider how you might adapt your keyword, bid and audience targeting strategy to account for the tapestry of varying school experiences and how those differ by school district. If you’re a retailer, consider how shopping campaigns, ad extensions and responsive search ads can help you to get your products in front of parents trying to build the proper school environment at home. The post Back to school looks very different this year appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3gpSARS |
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