This Week’s Industry News
Compiled by the Rocket Clicks Team
Top Stories
A/B Testing Now Available for AMP Content
The AMP project announced earlier this week that they’ve launched the <amp-experiment> tag that will allow webmasters to set up A/B tests for their AMP pages. The experiment is implemented via a JSON configuration that can be tweaked to determine whether a given user should be seeing the same experiment each time they visit as well as what percentage of traffic should see the experiment. Source: Accelerated Mobile Pages Project
Business Names Appearing in Call Only Ads
Industry experts have recently sighted an addition to the AdWords call-only ads, which debuted last year. While the typical call-only ad would feature a business’s phone number in the headline, experts are now seeing business names next to them. These additions have also been sighted on mobile devices, although Google has not yet released any details on this change. Source: Search Engine Land
Google Looking to Simplify and Improve Mobile UX
In 2014, Google introduced the mobile-friendly label to let searchers know which pages would function best on their mobile device. Fast forward two years later and Google has announced that they will be removing the tag due to the fact that 85% of pages in mobile search results are mobile-friendly. In the same post they made this announcement, Google revealed that starting on January 10, 2017, websites that serve up app interstitials will start getting penalized. Source: Google Webmaster Central Blog
AdWords Confirms Keyword Planner Limitations are Due to Bots
In recent weeks, Google has been limiting access to non-advertising accounts attempting to use the keyword planner tool. AdWords recently confirmed that abusive bots were part of the reason for this limitation, saying that “the changes will prevent bots and other services from abusing the intended use of the Keyword Planner.” Because of this reason, experts believe that it is highly unlikely they will reverse this change. Source: The SEM Post
Additional Commentary
Google’s Future is in the Cards
In this cleverly titled post, Dr. Peter J. Meyers examines Google’s slow transition to a desktop layout that closely matches that of the mobile SERPs. While Dr. Meyers concedes that a lot of the changes we’ve seen design-wise have been merely tests, he makes a good case for why we’ll likely eventually see the desktop results go to a single column format. As for what this potential change means, Dr. Meyers foresees the death of the traditional “ten blue links” brought on by the birth of a more diverse, feature-rich set of results. Analysis: Dr. Peter J. Meyers, Moz Blog
How to Get the Most out of Your Campaigns as a PPC Newbie
Brett Middleton offers his top three opportunities that all PPC newbies need to try when starting out. His first opportunity is to make use of the search terms report because you always need to be on top of what searches are triggering your paid ads. His second opportunity is to launch a Gmail Ad campaign, noting that it can be the most effective branding campaign through competitor targeting. The last opportunity is to focus on keywords with a low organic rank as he explains the important of using Google Analytics to review organic queries and find hidden gems to boost your ROI. Analysis: Brett Middleton, Search Engine Land
