This Week’s Industry News
Compiled by the Rocket Clicks Team
Top Stories
YouTube is Removing Spam Accounts
YouTube is warning users that they may see a noticeable decrease in subscribers as the company removes spam accounts. YouTube said they use a mix of industry leading techniques and technology to identify spam on the platform. Metrics like watch time should not be impacted, but channels that have spam subscribers removed will receive a notification banner in their Creator Studio. If subscriptions fall below 1,000 then channels will be removed from the YouTube Partner Program. Source: Search Engine Journal
Facebook is Now Testing Ads in Search Results
Facebook announced Tuesday that it is testing ads in its search results. The test will run in the primary search results as well as in Marketplace search results. The initial ad test is limited to select automotive and retail advertisers, but if the company sees a promising response, it will open up search results ad inventory more broadly. Advertisers cannot select specific keywords or phrases to target and this test is only available for static image and carousel ads. Source: Search Engine Land & Marketing Land
Things to Know Before Updating WordPress
Upgrading to the latest PHP will help increase the speed on your site, and provide the most security as the older versions will stop security updates. Update your plugins so that they are compatible with WordPress 5, and if you like the way WordPress currently works, you can use the Classic Editor. You can always revert back to the Classic Editor if Gutenberg is misbehaving. Also, create a backup of your WordPress site before updating using UpDraftPlus Backup Plugin. Source: Search Engine Journal
YouTube Phasing Out Call-To-Action Overlays
Starting in January, YouTube will phase out the call-to-action overlays in favor of a new ad extension. The new ad extensions can be applied to new and existing ads, while the old overlays were created as part of an ad. Just like the overlays, the call-to-action extensions are aimed at getting viewers to click through to the advertiser’s website to take further action. This change will apply to campaigns with branding objectives. The new ad extension will be available first for TrueView in-stream ads and eventually to bumper ads and TrueView video discover ads. Source: Marketing Land
Analysis:
How to Optimize for Google Discover
The Google Discover feed is based on a user’s browser history. Without search queries, keyword optimization won’t be enough to rank your content in Discover. Brands will need to focus more on the quality of the content they produce as well as its audience engagement. Discover uses more images and videos, so be sure to include high-quality images. Google will use the trustworthiness and quality of your content and the authority of your site as ranking factors. The more people you have interacting with your content, the more potential you will have to show up in the feed. Source: Search Engine Land
When Should You Automate Ad Extensions?
- Sitelinks – you should not automate your sitelinks because sitelinks give your business the opportunity to guide users to additional landing pages that could lead to conversions. Relinquishing control means foregoing the opportunity to enhance your conversion rates and ensure messaging is brand compliant.
- Callouts – you should not automate your callouts because like sitelinks, they enable you to add additional context to your ad in your brand voice. Additionally, automated callouts often leverage “action” terms like “Book online”.
- Structured Snippets – you should automate because Google has structured snippets that are exclusively available when you go with dynamic structured snippets. Additionally, sometimes structured snippets created by humans can face disapprovals that are time intensive to solve. Source: Navah Hopkins, WordStream
