This Week’s Industry News
Compiled by the Rocket Clicks Team
Top Stories
Google Removing Google+ Follower Extension from AdWords
Google recently announced that they will be dropping the Google+ follower’s annotation from AdWords ads. This recent change came as no surprise, as many recent changes creating more distance between Google+ and the search results. Experts speculate a potential Twitter follower social extension to replace it due to many brands promoting Twitter numbers over Google+. Source: The SEM Post
API for Google My Business Now Available
Not long after launching the API for Search Console, Google has decided to make the API for Google My Business available. This API will allow businesses to manage special business hours, mark a location as permanently closed, search and filter locations by name, set the service area for a business, and much more. Source: Search Engine Roundtable
Google Continues 4 Paid Search Ad Tests for 1% of Searches
A test by Google displaying four paid search ads above the search results has continued to display over the past few weeks, but only 1% of the time. The small fraction of the time the test does appear, four ads will appear above the search results, but no AdWords ads are displayed on the right side of the page. This means that if your ad isn’t showing in the top 4 ad spots, there is no chance for your ads to appear at the top of the search results. Source: The SEM Post
Google to Start Automatically Indexing HTTPS Pages
Google has made it no secret that they value security, and now they’ve revealed that they’ll start crawling HTTPS versions of HTTP sites automatically. This means that Google will be able to index all HTTPS URLs, regardless of whether they are being linked to or not. There are still a few factors that Google will consider before automatically displaying the HTTPS version of a page, but, ultimately, this is another strong move by Google in its quest to make the internet and its search results safer. Source: Google Webmaster Central Blog
Forecasting Data Added to AdWords Display Planner
Recently added to the Display Planner in AdWords is the ability to view estimates for clicks and impressions based on bids and budgets. The estimate will display a projection over time that relies on auction data as well as how much of the budget will be spent with the selected placements. You can view this now by selecting “get performance forecasts for your targeting” in the Display Planner. Source: Marketing Land
Facebook Quietly Adds Potential Yelp Competitor to Its Offerings
A brand new desktop-only section of Facebook was spotted recently and it looks like it might be Facebook’s answer to Yelp. This new feature allows Facebook users to search for any given business by category based on their location. After navigating to the business category landing page, users are given a list of the most highly rated businesses in that category, along with a map of the businesses, related business categories, and links to that business category for surrounding cities. Source: Search Engine Land
Additional Commentary
Reasons for Brand Term Bidding
With the help of fellow PPC experts on Twitter, Chris Lake shares several reasons to bid on your own brand terms. Brand search campaigns can give your account a quality score boost for a low cost. It can also keep those pesky competitors at bay as well as offer a boost to CTR. If you’re trying to be sneaky, you can push other results further down on the search results page with a Branded ad if there’s some bad press out there that you wouldn’t want users to see. Analysis: Diane Anselmo, PPC Hero
Great SEO Starts with Your Brand
We’ve known for some time that brand has an indirect, but potentially strong influence on how well a company’s website ranks in the search results. In this deep dive into the relationship between brand and SEO, Ruth Burr Reedy explains that developing a strong brand will lead to “stronger relationships with your customers, rank[ing] for a whole host of long-tail terms, and [to] quality signals Google likes to see”. Analysis: Ruth Burr Reedy, Moz
