This Week’s Industry News
Compiled by the Rocket Clicks Team
Top Stories
Captions Added to Google Images
To add more context to the image results, Google is now displaying a caption with each image in the mobile search results. The caption displayed will be pulled from the title of the page that the image is featured on. The caption will display below the image and above the page URL. This helps give more context for users to easily understand what the images are about and if that website would contain the relevant content for their needs, without the additional clicks. This could show conflicting image results if photos on a page do not match the title tags. Source: Google Blog
AdWords Adding Ability to Retarget Searchers With YouTube Ads
Soon, advertisers using AdWords will be able to reach YouTube viewer who have previously searched for related products and services. As an example, users searching for “best wireless headphones” may be shown ads from headphone manufacturers when they are on YouTube. Google is calling this “custom intent audiences” which, to be eligible to display ads to these audiences, all the advertiser needs to do is create a keyword list for their video campaign. Source: Search Engine Journal
Google Adds “Women-Led” Icon to Business Listings
Google My Business added a “women-led” icon to Google Maps and local search listings. Businesses can go to their GMB profile and add the “women-led” attribute under their “info” section. The new icon will appear in the attributes section of their business listing in Google Maps and the local panel. It includes the female gender plus symbol as the image representing it. Google announced this the day before International Women’s Day. Source: Search Engine Land
New Productivity Updates Coming to New AdWords UI
New features are coming to AdWord’s new interface that are aimed at improving productivity on the platform. Notes are being added, allowing advertisers to mark significant changes in account performance or new campaign launches. These can be created directly in the new UI and any user that has access to the account will be able to see them. In addition, the Opportunities tab is being revamped both in name and usefulness. It will now be called Recommendations and will contain 16 new types of recommendations that are custom-tailored to the account. This new page will also contain an Account Performance Score, which provides a visual representation of where the biggest optimization opportunities are in an account. Source: Search Engine Land
Google My Business Updates Insights Reporting
Google My Business updates the directions heatmap in the Insights Reporting to show you where people requesting directions to your business are located. The new directions heatmap should allow businesses to track which areas customers are requesting directions from and display that on the map at various zoom levels. You’ll see your location pinned on the map, and the most popular places people are asking Google Maps for directions to your address. Google wants businesses to use this to tailor their marketing outreach accordingly. Source: Search Engine Land
Analysis
Managing Account Downtime
Mark Ferree at PPC Hero provides tips to help us manage those moments of account downtime when an account is running flawlessly. His first tip is to automate what you can since automating reports or tasks can give you more time each week to focus on exceeding goals or coming up with new strategies. Ferree’s second tip is to re-evaluate your goals by taking a step back and question the overall direction of your daily work. When there’s account downtime, you can have a great opportunity to get a fresh perspective on account performance since a struggling account will require all of your time and attention. Of course, account downtime is also a perfect time to test new initiatives. Whether it’s new ad copy or a new platform, clients will be happy that you are pushing the account forward. Source: Mark Ferree, PPC Hero
Understanding High Bounce Rate
Gillon Hunter from Search Engine Journal explains why your site may have a high bounce rate. He says that search traffic will produce a low bounce rate while social traffic might produce a higher bounce rate. Look at the bounce rates from a particular time period and see if it correlates with any changes you made to your site. If a user is spending less than a minute on a page, you may want to add more engaging content to the content for that page. If you have a high bounce rate in your referral traffic, you may have a bad backlink that you will want to try and remove. Double check that your analytics is tracking all of your site’s pages and that your page load speed is optimized. Source: Search Engine Journal
