Over the last couple of years, Google updates have shown the company’s growing focus on monetizing searches with local intent and navigational queries. From local inventory ads, which are a version of Product Listings Ads that feature information on when a product can be picked up at a local brick-and-mortar store, to ads featured in the Local Pack, it’s clear that Google sees local searches as fertile ground for more ad interactions. This strategy has extended to Google Maps, where ads derived from location extensions now populate for searches. These ads are steadily growing in importance, as shown by a rise in the share of traffic attributed to the “Get location details” click type. ‘Get location details’ clicks on the riseWhile there’s no clean way to view all impressions and clicks from Google Maps, Google confirmed that very nearly all traffic attributed to the “Get location details” click type can be attributed to ads featured on Maps. Taking a look at the share of brand traffic for a sample of brick-and-mortar Merkle advertisers, we find that ads on Maps are steadily becoming a larger share of overall traffic. On phones in particular, brick-and-mortar brands saw a surge in “Get location details” traffic in Q1 and now see about 5 percent of brand traffic coming from this click type. The disproportionate share on phones makes sense given the on-the-go nature of mobile device usage. This click type is also growing as a share of non-brand text ad click share, but it tops out at around 1 percent for phones and tablets. It does seem logical that more users might type in the name of a specific store they’d like to visit in a Google Maps search than a non-brand query. However, non-brand traffic likely carries much more incremental value for advertisers, as brand searches within Google Maps would very likely return a brand’s local business locations organically without an ad present. Interestingly, tablet click share is actually higher than on phones for non-brand, and I’m unsure what might be causing this. Maybe users are just more likely to use non-brand searches in Google Maps on tablets than on phones. Either way, it’s clear that the volume of ad traffic coming from ads on Google Maps is steadily increasing across all device and query types. Since only Google knows how extensive its rollout has been to date in terms of query coverage and the number of ad units shown, it’s pretty tough to say how much larger these shares might grow in the future. However, there are a few things to look out for moving forward. Online conversion rate will likely sufferAds on Google Maps are classified as coming from google.com, despite the fact that users searching in Google Maps are obviously more likely looking for directions than are searchers on Google’s primary domain. As such, Google Maps searchers are less likely to convert online than google.com searchers, since they’re more likely to be looking for physical stores. The data bears this out, with online conversion rate for “Get location details” significantly lower than overall conversion rate for brand keywords for the median advertiser. Click and conversion volume for this click type is so low for non-brand that it’s not as easy to do a clean conversion rate comparison, but most brands also find non-brand conversion rate is significantly lower for “Get location details” clicks than overall non-brand clicks. At this point, the traffic share is so low that there isn’t much of an impact to most programs’ bidding based solely on online return on ad spend. However, as these ads become a bigger part of total traffic, that impact will become larger. Thus, brick-and-mortar brands will need to be even more diligent about tracking orders that occur in store that are tied to paid search clicks and include this value in calculating appropriate bids. CPC may go upSince Google Maps traffic is categorized as part of Google search traffic rather than the search partner network, brands can’t exclude ads from showing on Google Maps if there are active location extensions, as all search campaigns must target Google search. There’s also no way to adjust the price paid for Google Maps traffic relative to other Google search traffic. This is slightly concerning, mainly because “Get location details” clicks are more expensive on mobile devices than overall CPC for brand text ad for the median advertiser. Interestingly, desktop CPC for “Get location details” is actually lower than overall CPC. However, on phones, which have the highest click share coming from “Get location details,” CPC is 30 percent higher. Tablet CPC is way higher, which is another weird tablet data point that’s hard to explain. It’s not totally clear why these clicks are more expensive, but there is something of a parallel in the cost of search partner brand keyword clicks. While search partner non-brand clicks are cheaper for most advertisers than google.com traffic, the reverse is true for brand keywords. Since there are no bidding controls for either Search Partner or Google Maps ads, there’s no way to combat these higher costs, and brands that want this traffic simply have to eat the costs or turn off traffic entirely. Just like conversion rate, these CPC differences aren’t really impacting campaigns that much with such a small click share right now. But looking forward, that could change if Google’s able to ramp this traffic up. ConclusionAs the default navigational app on Android, as well as a popular source of in-browser navigational directions, Google Maps has a lot of users and traffic. Google is in the process of expanding its monetization of that traffic, defaulting advertisers with active location extensions for brick-and-mortar stores into showing Google Maps ads with little targeting control. This is part of Google’s recent larger focus on driving ad traffic from searches with local intent, with new formats like local inventory ads and ads in the Local Pack similarly targeted at drawing clicks from users looking for nearby brick-and-mortar options. Some of these ad units provide real incremental value to advertisers by getting local business information in front of interested searchers. Others, like Google Maps ads for brand keyword searches, seem redundant and less likely to drive incremental value for brands. Looking forward, most brands would like at least some ability to adjust the price paid, as well as the option to opt out of showing ads based on location extensions in Google Maps. For brands with multiple local stores, it’d also be nice to control which location a user is shown, since there might be other considerations besides proximity which warrant promoting a specific location. Hopefully, Google will provide such controls if these ad units continue to grow in terms of traffic share. For now, brands with physical locations should try to take advantage of in-store conversion and visit tracking, available through Google and other third parties, if possible, in order to tie these conversions to online clicks. This will help in calculating the value driven by ads, whether those on Google Maps or elsewhere across the Google search network. The post Google Maps ad traffic steadily growing appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2nnIEh8
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The breaking news came on March 7, 2017, that Baidu is now supporting Google’s mobile framework, AMP. The tech leader of Baidu MIP, Gao Lei, gave a speech at Google’s first AMP conference in New York. He confirmed that Baidu is working hand-in-hand with Google to accelerate the faster web globally. Baidu MIP, which stands for Mobile Instant Pages, is Baidu’s own version of Google’s AMP. The technologies of MIP are very similar to AMP. In fact, coding an MIP page is just like coding an AMP page, except MIP pages are more customized and optimized for the browsers in the market of mainland China. Baidu says that a Mobile Instant Page can reduce the rendering of above-the-fold content by 30 percent to 80 percent. Moreover, the tap-to-open rate will increase by 5 percent to 40 percent. And similar to Google, Baidu has been considering potentially giving the MIP pages a ranking advantage in search results. The two search engine giants are collaborating for the first time to tackle the problems of slow pages and unfriendly user experiences on mobile devices. Lei says that they are trying to avoid websites investing redundant resources to adopt both AMP and MIP. This implies that the future of AMP and MIP may look even more identical; that said, a one-for-all global mobile framework could be in the making. Baidu certainly is not going to abort its MIP project and replace it with Google’s AMP, as there have been over 1 billion MIP pages indexed by Baidu already. We have yet to confirm with Baidu exactly what they have aligned with Google, and how. They say that there are still technical issues to solve. However, Baidu has confirmed that users can eventually open an AMP page from a Baidu SERP. We don’t know how they plan to do this, whether by opening the AMP pages directly from the SERP or translating them into MIP pages. At Merkle China, we’ve already seen Google and Baidu taking the first steps. Prior to the announcement, the AMP Project website could not be loaded successfully in mainland China. I could only dial on a VPN to check the reference on www.ampproject.org. However, all ampproject.org links are now accessible. When we check the CDN, we see Google enabled the CDN for China, and it loads extremely fast! Given that most AMP traffic originates from Google organic SERPs, it wouldn’t have make sense for AMP documentation to be available in mainland China prior to the announcement. But now developers within the Great Firewall will be able to view and implement this documentation in preparation for Baidu’s support of this framework. This collaboration will certainly benefit mobile internet users, who will be able to enjoy hyper speed on their devices. Of course, it will also benefit brands that want to build a larger presence in mainland China. It is unclear whether users out of the Great Firewall can open an MIP page from a Google SERP; that will depend on whether Google decides to provide support MIP in its search results or accept the customized MIP pages as AMP pages. To be continued… ! The post Baidu becomes Google’s biggest ally in mobile page speed appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2odk1XZ One age-old question that often comes up when I chat with new prospects or new clients is, “Should I bid on my brand terms or generic terms where I rank in the top three organically?” This question is hardly trivial. It matters a great deal because PPC search budgets are generally constrained — and now, with other enticing options available from Facebook and other programmatic channels, we need to demonstrate that our search advertising budgets are being allocated optimally. Six key questions to ask before you beginThe best way to answer this question is by using a multi-stage process of evaluation, followed by experimentation. Let’s start by evaluating brand keywords. Before you start your evaluation or experiment, you need to answer six important questions:
Three key concepts to understandNow it’s time to introduce a few economic concepts that directly apply to the “Should I bid?” problem. One is “opportunity cost” — the cost/loss of not doing something. The second is the idea of marginal net profit. That’s about understanding the relative profit of all the search and paid media you are engaged in. (Another way of thinking about marginal net profit is by asking yourself this: if you were to invest another $100 in a particular channel within search, keywords, social, display and so on, which investment would deliver the highest return?) Finally, there’s the concept of “an inelastic auction.” Inelastic auctions are said to exist when obtaining more volume results in dramatically escalated costs as you battle others for top positions. That’s it for the economic concepts (whew!). But there’s another factor that applies here: the concept of cannibalization — the primary driver of the “Should I bid?” problem. Cannibalization, in the context of PPC, refers to situations in which marketers’ paid and organic listings compete with each other for search clicks. When this happens, marketers often attempt to pare back PPC spend, reasoning that “they typed in my brand and want to visit my site, so we’ll get them anyway, eventually.” Your own “cannibalization index” can be determined by evaluating your answers to questions 1–6 above. Okay, you’ve got the concepts. Let’s move on to solving the question. (Note: the methods below aren’t perfect, but chances are that using them can move you closer to a solution.) Five steps to a solutionStep 1: Calculate CTR (click-through rte) on Organic. Search Console can be used to determine this. Step 2: Turn on or off paid search nationwide/globally, and then compare organic CTR pre- and post-test. Step 3: Calculate total cumulative CTR when the paid and organic listings coexist in the SERP. (Cumulative CTR lets us understand the incrementality on total clicks and CTR of paid.) Step 4: Compare conversion rate on paid vs. organic, including taking PPC and organic sitelinks into account. (Often marketers use different landing pages for their paid primary and sitelink visitors, and those tuned landing pages out-convert the organic pages. If this isn’t true in your case, then your calculations are made easier.) Step 5: Take the drop in organic clicks as a result of your paid listings getting the clicks, subtract that number from the paid click count, and re-calculate the ROI of the paid advertising, based purely on the incremental clicks that the paid campaign delivered. (You may need to use a “fudge factor” if conversion rates on the organic listings were lower.) Can I really do this?“But wait,” you protest, “I can’t just turn off brand keywords during a test. My boss will kill me if sales drop! Besides, where else am I going to put that budget? Most of the other keywords are already close to minimum acceptable ROI, and I can’t use the brand dollars to bid those up!” OK, fair point. In many cases, it still makes sense to bid on branded keywords, even after taking cannibalization into account. If you don’t want to send too many ripples through your current campaigns at one time, limit the scope of your experiment, for example, by testing results in five mid-sized cities. (You’ll have to use location bid modifiers/adjustments to do this. See If you choose to run your test in specific geographies instead of nationally or globally, you’ll have the added advantage of conversion data that isn’t subject to seasonality or other factors that might show up in a purely longitudinal test (test over time with one time period being the control group). Internal company politics also play a role. You may want to add a fudge factor to your calculations based on a Marketing Mix model calculation, or if you are still building a brand and want to be recognized as a market leader. If you’re like most marketers who run this test, you likely will find that bidding on your brand keywords still makes sense from an ROI, net search profit and budget allocation analysis. Others, however, may find that paring back spend — or increasing it — increases net search profit (profit after deducting all costs). For high organic positions, the answers are more dependent on landing page variations and head or tail terms. One thing is for sure: if your boss is questioning brand spend or spend on high-ranking organic keywords, run a test like the one above. You’ll gain the confidence that you’re doing the right thing or, at the very least, are on the right track. The post How to decide ‘Should I bid?’ appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2oCPD5M Discover simon chan’s foolproof recipe for expanding your MLM business into new markets that’ll explode your downline, allow you to have fun while you travel and create a more stable long term residual income — Even if you can't speak a second language nor know anyone that lives there! Get it HERE Welcome to a special episode where you get to hear what’s going on Behind the Scenes at MLM Nation and get a close up view of the life of an entrepreneur. This is where you’ll get not only the latest news about MLM Nation, but a sneak peek inside the life of Simon Chan… Learn about the latest adventures that Simon is going through… His journey as a husband and father… His wins and losses… His reflections and deep thoughts… What Simon is currently reading and learning … In this Episode You’ll Learn:Quarterly Meetings and Return to Manila Recommended Resources Mentioned On ShowNO BS NO HYPE Australia What Did You Learn?Thanks for joining me on the show. So what did you learn? If you enjoyed this episode please share it on social media and send it to someone that needs extra motivation in their MLM business. Do you have any thoughts or comments? Please take 60 seconds to leave an HONEST review for the MLM Nation Podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely important for me to make this show better. Finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes so that you get updates and new episodes downloaded to your phone automatically. Click Here to Subscribe via iTunes Click here to Subscribe via Stitcher Click Here to Subscribe via RSS (non-iTunes feed) The post 314: Behind the Scenes @ MLM Nation appeared first on MLM Nation: Network Marketing Training | Prospecting | Lead Generation | Leadership | Duplication | Motivation. via MLM Nation: Network Marketing Training | Prospecting | Lead Generation | Leadership | Duplication | Motivation http://ift.tt/2nveSYv “Focus on the process and not the results.” Jason Buckner shows us systems that Jason uses to create residual income. And also, key philosophies Jason learnt from his mentors. Here’s your chance to finally own my most treasured collection of network marketing training… Reports, Checklists, and Implementation guides. Literally everything I use to grow and operate my network marketing business. Who is Jason Buckner?Jason Buckner was a college educated lifeguard when he came across network marketing. After years of floundering in MLM, he finally met some mentors that changed his life. Now 20 years later, Jason likes to call himself an “overnight success.” Favorite Quote“Don’t be perplexed by the perplexing. It can be perplexing.” -Jim Rohn Must Read BookThink and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hil Recommended Online AppRecommended Prospecting ToolJason loves to text a video link. Contact InfoWhat Did You Learn?Thanks for joining me on the show. So what did you learn? If you enjoyed this episode please share it on social media and send it to someone that needs extra motivation in their MLM business. Do you have any thoughts or comments? Please take 60 seconds to leave an HONEST review for the MLM Nation Podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely important for me to make this show better. Finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes so that you get updates and new episodes downloaded to your phone automatically. Click Here to Subscribe via iTunes Click here to Subscribe via Stitcher Click Here to Subscribe via RSS (non-iTunes feed) The post 313: Why Following Systems is Your BEST best by Jason Buckner appeared first on MLM Nation: Network Marketing Training | Prospecting | Lead Generation | Leadership | Duplication | Motivation. via MLM Nation: Network Marketing Training | Prospecting | Lead Generation | Leadership | Duplication | Motivation http://ift.tt/2ntVmNV “Run with your strengths and eventually people will shore up your weaknesses.” Al Rodriguez shows us how to get over all the “no’s” you’ll hear along the way. And also, expert techniques to overcoming lack of focus. Discover the untold secrets to running more profitable business opportunity meetings… So you can signup more distributors, get your downlines to duplicate and boost your income! Who is Al Rodriguez?Al Rodriguez is a network marketing leader with almost 20 years of MLM experience. Prior to MLM, he had several traditional businesses including his mortgage banking company that sucked up his time and he had no life. After over 7 invites to take a look at a MLM presentation, Al finally decided to join out of desperation. When Al finally got started, he was as he described himself, “super bad” but somehow got involved in a 90 day run that forever changed his life. Al’s motto is to work hard, work smart and it’s always family first. He and his wife are both full time networkers and they get to homeschool their two twins. Favorite QuoteAl prefers the phrase “eye of the tiger” Must Read BookHow to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie Recommended Online AppRecommended Prospecting ToolHis companies 9 minute Audio or video links Contact InfoWhat Did You Learn?Thanks for joining me on the show. So what did you learn? If you enjoyed this episode please share it on social media and send it to someone that needs extra motivation in their MLM business. Do you have any thoughts or comments? Please take 60 seconds to leave an HONEST review for the MLM Nation Podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely important for me to make this show better. Finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunes so that you get updates and new episodes downloaded to your phone automatically. Click Here to Subscribe via iTunes Click here to Subscribe via Stitcher Click Here to Subscribe via RSS (non-iTunes feed) The post 312: How a proper mindset can take you to the top by Al Rodriguez appeared first on MLM Nation: Network Marketing Training | Prospecting | Lead Generation | Leadership | Duplication | Motivation. via MLM Nation: Network Marketing Training | Prospecting | Lead Generation | Leadership | Duplication | Motivation http://ift.tt/2odOL7Q Google has been ramping its efforts to tie clicks on ads to store traffic. On Wednesday, the search giant said it has now captured over four million store visits after users have clicked on an ad, up from one billion a little less than a year ago, and is set to rapidly expand that number. In September, Google extended the now two-year old store visits measurement program to ads on the Display Network and said it had statistically significant visibility into visits to 200 million stores globally. The company says it is now positioned to make store visits data available to thousands more advertisers due to advancements in several components of the measurement process. Google measures store visits based on aggregated and anonymized data from users who opt into Location History tracking on their phones, Google surveys and mapping technology. (For more background on how Google captures store visits data, see Under The Hood: How Google AdWords Measures Store Visits and Google’s Surojit Chatterjee: Here’s Why You Should Trust AdWords Estimated Store Visits.) The company says that in the past month, it has shifted to using deep learning models that can train on larger data sets to increase accuracy in prioritizing location signals. “This allows us to reliably measure more store visits in contexts that are typically tricky, such as in multi-story malls and dense geographies where many business locations are situated close to each other,” Kishore Kanakamedala, director of product management for online-to-offline solutions, wrote in Wednesday’s blog post. Recent mapping improvements include a refresh of Google Earth and Google Street View images to get up-to-date views of where buildings begin and end, as well as a global effort to scan WiFi strength in more buildings to determine business boundaries. Google surveys some users to verify the locations they’ve visited and then reconciles that feedback against its predictions to continue training the models. In addition, Google says it now has teams that conduct in-person audits and site visits, particularly in high store density areas, to provide more data. In November, Google added store visits data to distance and location reports in AdWords to provide more detail on how far users were from a store location when they clicked on an ad and what areas drive the highest volume of store visits, down to the postal code. The post Google says it has now tracked 4 billion store visits from ads appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2oz4WMO Sistrix, an SEO toolset data collection company, published their analysis of the Google Fred update after reviewing “nearly 300 domains.” Their analysis describes the sites and pages that were hit like this:
They have confirmed our analysis of Fred, where we said low value content sites were hit by this update. Juan Gonzalez from Sistrix analyzed 300 website domains on Google Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States, all of which lost Google search results visibility after March 13, 2017. Juan said that “nearly all losers were very advertisement heavy, especially banner ads, many of which were AdSense campaigns … Another thing that we often noticed was that those sites offered little or poor quality content, which had no value for the reader.” He then shared specific examples of sites that were hit and how bad their visibility dropped. Many of the sites lost between 50 percent and 90 percent visibility in Google, which correlates with what we’ve seen webmasters report their Google traffic has dropped after being hit by this Fred update. This chart shows the ranking distribution on Google for freewarefiles.com before the Fred update: This chart shows the ranking distribution on Google for freewarefiles.com after the Fred update: Here is a visibility report from Sistrix show a 75 percent drop for freewarefiles.com in Google.com: Google has confirmed there was a new update but would not add anything outside of the fact that what it targeted can be found in the Google webmaster guidelines. The post Fred’s losers: Sistrix analysis says ad-heavy, thin-content sites hit worst appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2mPW8Ww If you’re still using monthly budgets for your Bing Ads campaigns, now is the time to switch over to daily budgets. Starting in April, campaigns set with monthly budgets will be migrated automatically to “Daily accelerated” budget delivery if you don’t take action ahead of time. Bing will calculate the daily budget by dividing the monthly budget by 30.4 or the minimum allowable daily budget. And if you have any Automated Rules that incorporate monthly budgets, you’ll need to create new rules based on daily budgets. Any Automated Rules associated with monthly budgets will not be migrated. Shared budgets are already based on daily delivery, so this change does not impact any campaigns that do share budgets. The post Bing Ads will automatically migrate monthly budgets to daily in April appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2nv3I6k Last month, Google released a video detailing best practices for hiring an SEO company, and it is positioned to become the go-to guide for hiring an SEO. After all, who better to tell companies what they should look for in an SEO than the operators of the world’s most popular search engine? The advice in the video is useful, but it’s biased and incomplete — like so much of the information the company distributes. For example, Ohye states that valid recommendations from an SEO must be corroborated by official Google statements, but the search giant frequently declines to comment on algorithm updates, and they have also been known to advise what they want SEOs to do — not necessarily what works. Reputable SEO companies seriously consider all official statements that Google makes about its ranking factors. But if Google is an SEO company’s only source of data and best practice information, the results of the SEO’s work are likely to be suboptimal. Whether you’re trying to hire an SEO company or improve your own SEO strategy in general, remember a few things about Google: their word is not always their bond, their data is deliberately incomplete, and they are a for-profit company. 1. Google’s word is not gospelIn 2011, Google released an authorship feature in search. By using Schema.org markup, web content could be attributed to a specific author. Authors with multiple high-quality, published pieces would become their own positive ranking factor for content attributed to them. It was an exciting change for both SEOs and writers, and Google expressed a long-term commitment to the feature on multiple occasions. But in mid-2014, authorship was discontinued. Google cited low adoption rates and low value to searchers as its reasons for discontinuing the feature. It is a notable example of the problem with following Google’s advice to the letter, and it is only one of dozens of discontinued Google services. Is it wrong for Google to discontinue a feature that offers low value? Absolutely not. But it does demonstrate that just because Google recommends something, it doesn’t mean it’s a valuable task to invest time and money into. Another example is Google’s assertion late last year that a penalty was coming for sites with intrusive interstitials. They announced the change and forewarned SEOs and webmasters so that they’d have time to remove offending interstitials from their sites. In January, the change was rolled out, but sites who had ignored the warnings don’t seem to have been penalized. Google’s inconsistencies mean two things:
2. Google’s data is incompleteGoogle is also known for distilling limited information when it comes to the data provided in its tools. Google Analytics and Search Console are valuable sources of data for engagement SEO tasks and keyword and user intent research, but the data provided by these tools is incomplete. For example, in 2013, Google moved to SSL encrypted search for all users. This removed keyword data that was formerly accessible through Google Analytics, replacing it with instances of “not provided” data. SEOs were forced to turn to the only other viable source of discovering keywords a site is currently ranking for: Google Search Console. But in a study published by Moz early this year, researchers found that the numbers in Search Console do not match tests performed in search or Google Analytics data. The researchers ultimately concluded that webmasters should be skeptical of the data in Google Search Console and must validate the data retrieved to avoid reaching unreliable conclusions. Data provided by Google is rounded, estimated, sampled and incomplete. If you’re hiring an SEO company, be sure to ask what tools they use. Analytics and Search Console should be on the list, but they should be paired with third-party tools as well. And it’s not just numerical or keyword data. Google has a long history of getting SEOs to work for them by only distributing information that promotes its own agenda. Remember to take Google’s official advice — whether it’s about hiring an SEO or specific SEO strategies — with a grain of salt. 3. Google is a for-profit company, not a public serviceWhen an algorithm update is released or a change is made, the reasoning Google provides almost always points back to providing an excellent user experience. This makes it easy to imagine that their decisions are grounded in public service: provide excellent search results so people can find what they need quickly and easily. But Google is not a public service, it’s a for-profit company. A 2015 report, “Beyond the FTC Memorandum: Comparing Google’s Internal Discussions with Its Public Claims,” compared Google’s internal policies and practices to their public statements about those policies and practices and found several inconsistencies. The FTC found evidence to question whether Google’s search results:
Because Google’s empire is built on paid ads. In the first quarter of 2015 Google took in $17.3 billion in revenue, up 12% year over year. Nearly all of it — $15.5 billion — came from advertising sales. About $12 million of that came on the company’s own sites with the rest being derived from its network. The value of that digital real estate depends on users preferring their service and spending time on their SERPs, which is why paid ad space is growing. In 2016, Google added a fourth ad slot above organic search results and expanded the amount of text that can appear in ads. While these changes have driven increased ad growth, they’ve harmed organic search growth, which is arguably not in the user’s best interest. Further:
Between additional top-of-page and bottom-of-page ads, featured snippets, carousels, Google tools and “people also ask” boxes, organic search results on page one have been reduced from 10 links to an average of 8.5. For many queries, organic results do not appear until well below the fold. In some cases — particularly for content in featured snippets — these changes have helped sites grow incoming organic traffic. In other cases, these changes have served Google in overtaking its competitors:
These changes to SERPs result in users spending more time on Google and seeing more ads. A recent study by Moz and Jumpshot proved that on mobile search, which Google is favoring moving forward, more than half of all searches result in zero clicks. For an advertising-funded search engine, these changes are unsurprising, though seemingly counterproductive to the searcher-first policies the company enforces on other sites. Thus, when Google releases new information, it’s important to consider it in a larger context. For example, if you removed all of the newsletter signup interstitials from your site at Google’s command, you likely experienced a reduction in incoming leads and new subscribers. There’s also no reason to believe that Google’s recent advice about hiring an SEO agency is any more altruistic. If you’re going to start working with an SEO professional, be sure to ask how they approach challenges like shrinking organic results and the rise of mobile search. SEO is more complex — and competitive — than ever beforeSome have pointed to these changes as proof that SEO is dead, but that’s an over-dramatization of the facts. SEO is not dead, but it is more competitive than ever before. Google is a serious competitor to contend with in search results, but it’s not the only one:
The amount of content online is massive, and there are a lot of companies vying for users’ attention. The growth in competition for search results isn’t surprising given than Google reports handling more than 2 trillion searches per year. Search represents a significant market for inbound traffic, and the bottom line is that Google is still the most popular search engine. It’s an extremely powerful, viable and required channel for marketers. The best thing to look for when hiring an SEO is someone who understands modern SEO strategies, and who teaches you how to utilize the power of search engines to grow your own audience. This is advice Google will never provide, but it is nonetheless crucial to successful digital marketing in a fiercely competitive field. It definitely won’t do digital publishers any good to try to fight the search giant, but — whether you’re hiring an SEO or improving your strategy in general — remember to keep Google’s advice in context. The post Why Google’s SEO advice is NOT (always) in your best interest appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land http://ift.tt/2ogEIPY |
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