Google Has Confirmed They Are Removing Toolbar PageRank
In the news: It’s official, Google has decided to fully kill off toolbar PageRank from their browser tools. Read more
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Google: 82% Of Super Bowl Ad Searches Happened On Mobile, Up From 70%
Pity the Super Bowl advertisers that didn’t take full advantage of mobile search this year. According to Google, 82 percent of TV ad-driven searches during the Super Bowl happened on smartphones. That’s a 12-point jump from last year, when 70 percent of Super Bowl ad-related searches across Google and YouTube derived from phones.
During this year’s game, just 11 percent of searches related to ads aired during the big game happened on desktop/laptop, and seven percent occurred on tablets.
Overall, the ads drove more than 7.5 million incremental searches during the Broncos-Panthers game, according to Google. That’s 40 percent higher than the lift last year’s Super Bowl advertisers saw in search.
Searches driven by Super Bowl TV ads were at their highest levels during the first two quarters of this year’s match-up. Ads-related searches fell in the second half of the game, in which the score remained relatively tight. Google says this trend reflects what happened during last year’s close game.
That contrasts with 2014, when audiences seemingly grew bored when the Seahawks dominated the Broncos, winning 43–8, and searches for ad content rose in the second half of the game.
Looking at the incremental lift Super Bowl advertisers received in brand-related searches on across Google and YouTube, Audi came out on top with its “Commander” ad. In fact, automotive brands dominated the chart. Four of the top five ads driving lift in brand search were from automotive manufacturers: Audi, Acura, Honda and Kia. Universal Studios’ ad for the new Jason Bourne movie rounded out the top five.
Google also released a set of Google Trends data related to the Super Bowl. While the Broncos dominated the Panthers in search most days leading up to the big game, Carolina actually held sway throughout most of the actual game — that is, until the Broncos walked away with the win
H/T Search Engine Land
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Bing Now Powers AOL Search: What Advertisers Need To Know
The move is now official: Bing has taken over serving search results and ads for AOL from Google. Initially announced in June 2015, the 10-year deal affects all AOL search traffic worldwide and on all devices. Here’s a look at what the move means for those managing Bing Ads campaigns.
First, the Ad distribution section under Ad Group level settings now includes AOL along with Bing and Yahoo.
You can now also change ad group level network distribution within Bing Ads Editor. Whatever your settings are now, they won’t change, other than the fact that AOL is now included.
Bringing AOL into the fold also includes AOL’s syndicated search partners in relevant locations. You’ll have insights into this type of traffic that wasn’t available when AOL ads were served by Google. In the Website URL (Publisher) report, the URLs of AOL owned and operated websites will be shown on separate lines and not consolidated with Bing and Yahoo’s owned and operated websites listed under “Bing and Yahoo! Search Properties Only.” You might not necessarily know that the site is part of the AOL syndication, but you will be able to add individual sites to exclusionlists.
AOL search also now appears as a new value in the Network and Top vs. Other columns in reports (including those run from the Reporting API), such as the Keyword performance report and Campaign performance report, and AOL is listed with Bing and Yahoo syndicated search partners.
AOL traffic now factors into both Bing Ads Campaign and Keyword Planners, as well. For more details, see the Bing Ads blog post on the updates.
H/T: Search Engine Land
Google Launches Smart Goals For Advertisers That Don’t Have Conversion Tracking
If you’re not already using AdWords conversion tracking or importing goals from Google Analytics into your AdWords account, the new Smart Goals might be the next best thing.
Smart Goals are powered by Google Analytics and designed to help businesses that don’t currently have a way to measure conversions and optimize their campaigns. There are thousands of advertisers in this position.
The key distinction is that Smart Goals don’t measure actions taken on an advertiser’s website, like conversion tracking and Analytics goals do. Instead, Smart Goals use the anonymized conversion data of other websites using Google Analytics to identify visits that are “most likely” to convert based on Google’s model. From the announcement:
To generate Smart Goals, we apply machine learning across thousands of websites that use Google Analytics and have opted in to share anonymized conversion data. From this information, we can distill dozens of key factors that correlate with likelihood to convert: things like session duration, pages per session, location, device and browser. We can then apply these key factors to any website. The easiest way to think about Smart Goals is that they reflect your website visits that our model indicates are most likely to lead to conversions.
To set up Smart Goals, you’ll need to link your Analytics and AdWords accounts. In Analytics, select Smart Goals under Goals in the Admin tab.
A nice feature is that Smart Goals don’t get activated automatically. You can see how well the Smart Goals model is working for your site before activating it by looking at a new “Smart Goals” page under Conversions in Analytics. Here you’ll be able to analyze the behavior of Smart Goals visits and compare it to those visits not deemed likely to convert. In the (somewhat extreme) example from Google below, the Smart Goals visits didn’t bounce, visited significantly more pages and stayed on-site longer than visits the model did not deem likely to convert.
If you’re satisfied with the results, you can then import Smart Goals into AdWords.
With Smart Goals imported, advertisers can set a target cost per acquisition (CPA) with the Smart Goal being the acquisition: “In this way, you’re able to optimize your AdWords spend based on the likelihood of conversion as determined by our model.”
Google says Smart Goals will be rolling out over the next few weeks. Also note that to be eligible, the Google Analytics view has to receive at least 1,000 clicks from AdWords over a 30-day period “to ensure the validity of your data.”
H/T: Search Engine Land.
#Mobilegeddon: Did Your Mobile Site Survive the Google Algorithm Update?
It’s happened, Google Algorithm Update is now upon us. But what’s changed? And how has the world reacted?
Web publishers around the world are commenting on Google’s mobile-only algorithm and the common theme is one of concern for the deadline, but also a desire to do what’s best for their site visitors and the long-term goals of the business. Jim Olenbush, a real estate agent in Austin noted:
“The old site works well and it is quick loading and error free. The new responsive design was slower initially and required some work to speed it up, plus we kept finding crawl errors. We have been working on the new site for a long time, and I thought I would have it online by Jan 1st at the latest. And when Google announced their mobile “deadline” later I thought we would be online with the new site in time. But ultimately it is not quite ready, and I would rather miss out on some mobile traffic for a little while than to release a new site with issues such as broken links, missing canonicals and other errors. Those errors are bad for users, and they are also harmful to future rankings if you accidentally send Googlebot crawling a bunch of duplicate content pages on your site.”
According to Neil Marshall, the head administrator at WebmasterWorld.com, there are four major concerns dominating discussions:
1. Inherent shortcomings of mobile friendly designs
2. Lingering uncertainty as to the best solution; responsive design or a dedicated mobile site
3. Degradation of the search results if the best sites aren’t mobile friendly
4. Surprise that so many competitors aren’t already mobile friendly
Designing for Mobile Involves Difficult Choices
There are indeed many shortcomings in mobile designs, including aesthetics, particularly the awkward placement of various navigational links. And there is no clear choice as to the best solution, responsive design or dedicated mobile. Responsive designs often make compromises in site design which may not be favorable to either desktop or mobile visitors. While creating a strictly mobile solution means dealing with essentially two websites, and the headaches that come with maintaining two designs for the same content.
Will .Edu Web Pages Disappear from Google?
The concern that the mobile algo will favor lower quality mobile-friendly sites at the expense of the best sites is justified. Content hosted on .edu websites represents some of the most authoritative information available online. Will that content disappear if it’s not mobile friendly? I spoke with Gregg Banse, the Web Services Manager at George Mason University who noted that many university websites are composed of independently developed websites, with each department responsible for their own web design.
“The sites are undergoing a major overhaul as I write this. The issues stem from the fact that George Mason University departments (much like many of the larger universities) developed websites on their own because of a lack of central leadership back when it mattered most. The result is 500+ silos that we’re working to apply a common brand and bring on board a brand new CMS platform. The initial launch will be late this summer and won’t be completed until summer of 2018.”
If George Mason University is typical, then this could pose an issue with the quality of Google’s search results for which university websites are the most relevant result. 2018 is a long time to go with what may be compromised search results.
Was Mobilegeddon Not Publicized Enough?
According to Neil Marshall, web publishers have noted that many competitors are not yet mobile friendly.
“There’s surprise amongst many how few sites in their niche’s are mobile friendly, especially as we all know mobile was the next big thing a few years back.”
This is true even in Japan. I asked Daisuke Nakata, a search industry authority in Japan if Japanese websites were mobile friendly by now and he responded, “Not in general.” Then added that web publishers are concerned,
“Japanese web masters are serious about this algorithm change.”
Lada Kalashnickova of the Russian search industry news site, SearchEngines.ru, noted that web publishers have been anticipating this deadline with great interest.
“Russian web publishers are concerned with the mobile update, of course. We are trying to stay up to date with mobile friendly sites regardless of Google’s deadline, we find it very important. It is not so much fear that is motivating concern for the deadline, but then again we can not say it is business as usual either.”
Summary
That may very well sum up the general mood of web publishers around the world. For many this may be a non-event because they’ve already updated their sites. For others it’s business as usual, just one more thing to deal with. How this affects .Edu websites is an important consideration and how that will be resolved remains to be seen. Will high quality university sites be whitelisted and receive a free pass or will their authoritative information go missing on Google? How about you, are your sites mobile friendly? What is happening where you are at?
R/T Search Engine Journal. Featured Image: Create by Author for Search Engine Journal Using Shutterstock Images 1, 2 and feature image Google Images.
Rolling out the mobile-friendly update – Google Webmaster Blog
As we noted earlier this year, today’s the day we begin globally rolling out our mobile-friendly update. We’re boosting the ranking of mobile-friendly pages on mobile search results. Now searchers can more easily find high-quality and relevant results where text is readable without tapping or zooming, tap targets are spaced appropriately, and the page avoids unplayable content or horizontal scrolling.
This update:
- Affects only search rankings on mobile devices
- Affects search results in all languages globally
- Applies to individual pages, not entire websites
While the mobile-friendly change is important, we still use a variety of signals to rank search results. The intent of the search query is still a very strong signal — so even if a page with high quality content is not mobile-friendly, it could still rank high if it has great content for the query.
To check if your site is mobile-friendly, you can examine individual pages with the Mobile-Friendly Test or check the status of your entire site through the Mobile Usability report in Webmaster Tools. If your site’s pages aren’t mobile-friendly, there may be a significant decrease in mobile traffic from Google Search. But have no fear, once your site becomes mobile-friendly, we will automatically re-process (i.e., crawl and index) your pages. You can also expedite the process by using Fetch as Google with Submit to Index, and then your pages can be treated as mobile-friendly in ranking.
Questions? See our FAQ or ask on the Mobile Websites section of the Webmaster Forum.
Mobilegeddon? We find out Today
Today is the big day, known as Mobilegeddon, with the Google Mobile Friendly Update starting to roll out today.
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