This Week’s Industry News
Compiled by the Rocket Clicks Team
Top Stories
Google’s Board Core Algorithm Update
On August 1st, Google released an Algorithm update that is now fully rolled out. The algorithm seems to be affecting health and medical sites and Your Money Your Life (YMYL) sites the most. YMYL sites are referred to page content that: solicit personal information, are used for monetary transactions, offer medical, health information, or advice on major life decision or giving legal and financial advice. The update is also based on EAT (expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness). The only advice given is to make your site, content and user experience better overall. Source: Search Engine Land
Facebook Cracking Down on Bail Bond & Addiction Treatment Ads
With the help of feedback Facebook received from industry and policy experts, the social media platform will no longer allow the promotion of bail bond services and will only allow ads for addiction treatment centers from advertisers that have been approved by third-party certification platform LegitScript. Even after a treatment center has been certified, they’ll still complete an on-boarding request for Facebook to begin showing ads. This crackdown also follows Google’s previous decision to institute ad policies that limit search ads for addiction treatment queries. In addition, Facebook has also recently restricted weapon accessory ad targeting to users over 18 and up. Source: Marketing Land
Bing’s Intelligent Hotel Booking Features
Bing can now give you options to search for a specific hotel by date and see the prices across several booking sites. It also shows you a hotel class star rating and booking tips like “pay less for hotels in 2 miles.” The data includes a comparison view that provides pricing by hotel options and amenities. Bing has also added a new home services search feature to show quotes for common home renovations and leads users to a provider on Yelp. Source: Bing Blog
Google to Add Extended Character Limits to Text Ads
Starting at the end of August, Google will be extending the additional headline and description line benefits of Responsive Search Ads to existing text ads. This means that advertisers will be able to add a third headline and a second description line of up to 90 characters to their text ads. On this change, Google stated that “While we work on improving responsive search ads across languages, it’s important to extend that same advantage to your existing text ads.” This will allow advertisers to take up even more real estate on the paid side of the search results page if you’d prefer not to rely on the machine learning of Responsive Search Ads. Source: Search Engine Land
Analysis
How to Receive a Featured Video Snippet
Last year, Google released Suggested Clips as a type of featured snippets for videos. In order to optimize your chances for a “How To” video snippet, you should create reference text that matches your video closely. Outline the procedures in simple steps and order the headings to add semantic meaning. Place the text-based reference in the video’s description or through video structured data. Ensure that the audio is well-optimized for audio transcription with high quality, clear audio with minimal background sounds. Use SEMrush to find where YouTube already has a featured snippet and where they rank well for “how to” terms to find the best opportunities. Source: BriggsBy
Does AOL Add Value to Your Bing Paid Account?
Whether you know it or not, AOL’s partnership with Bing does have an effect on your ad performance. PPC Hero’s Alaina Thompson took a look at the impact of AOL on some of her own accounts and found that, while the impact overall was small, it was still mighty. While only accounting for 1% of impressions in a 45-day period, AOL managed to generate 1.5% of the total spend and 3.2% of the revenue. In another light, she found that AOL’s revenue/click was 89% higher than Bing/Yahoo. In addition, in Thompson’s case, AOL specifically maintained a conversion rate of 2.42%, above Bing/Yahoo’s 1.50%. Unfortunately, Thompson did not have an answer to why exactly AOL held a higher conversion rate but if Bing can find a way to make AOL valuable in the future, they’re doing something right. Source: Alaina Thompson, PPC Hero
