This Week’s Industry News
Compiled by the Rocket Clicks Team
Top Stories
A Look Inside Googlebot’s Crawl Budget
After plenty of speculation, Google has finally provided some information on their “crawl budget” and how it affects Googlebot’s activity. When Googlebot goes out to crawl a site it tries to be as non-intrusive as possible to active users. To do this the crawl rate is responsive in real time by using more connections to crawl a site when it is responding quickly and reducing those connections if the site slows down. Crawl demand goes hand-in-hand with the crawl rate to become the crawl budget that defines the number of URLs Googlebot can and wants to crawl. Source: Google Webmaster Central Blog
Bing Ads Launched Ad Scheduling for Extensions
Bing has recently rolled out a feature for advertisers that will allow them to schedule set times and days for their ad extensions to show. In addition, there is an option to set the timing based on the time zone of the user or the time zone set for the account. Advertisers will be able to set ad extension schedules through the Bing Ads API, Bulk Upload, or the Google Import functions but not the Bing Ads Editor as of yet. Source: Search Engine Land
DuckDuckGo Users Have More than 10 Billion Searches
Privacy search engine DuckDuckGo recently surpassed 10 billion searches, 4 billion of those searches happened in 2016 alone. Users looking to reduce their online digital footprint use DuckDuckGo to search without their queries being tracked and the trend for privacy isn’t going anywhere. DuckDuckGo also announced their biggest day to date happened on January 10th, 2017 with 14 million searches. Source: Search Engine Land
Google Testing Local 4 Packs With 1 Ad
Following up from Google’s recent test of the Local 4 Pack containing 4 paid listings, Google has recently launched another test: this time with one paid listing followed by three organic listings. Previous iterations of these tests have pushed organic listings further down, but the single ad above three organic listings may the most optimal format yet as both paid and organic listings still stay prominent in the pack. So far, this test seems to only be appearing on mobile devices. Source: The SEM Post
How News and “Top Stories” are Ranked in Search Results
At a recent Google Webmaster Office Hours, organic analysts were provided a little insight into how the “In The News” and “Top Stories” section in search results is determined. The algorithm looks at content, queries, and how the results make sense relating to the search in addition to a number of other, currently unknown factors. Google employee, John Mueller, admitted that there isn’t one magic thing that you can do to make yourself show up in the news and stories. Source: The SEM Post
Additional Commentary
Why You Should Consider Investing in Amazon Marketing Services
Kelly Pollock shares a few reasons on why she believes you should invest your marketing dollars into Amazon Marketing Services. Pollock first notes that, at the end of the holiday season, Amazon was reported producing sales with 130% less cost than platforms like Google and Bing. The author then explains the unique targeting options like the ability to place your product ads on the detail pages of similar products. Pollock’s final note is that Amazon is continuing to improve their marketer’s toolbox, in particular allowing users to create ads that look similar to other organic listings. Analysis: Kelly Pollock, PPC Hero
On-Site Search: The Forgotten Child of Your SEO Tactics
A lone study in 2014 determined that 30% of visitors perform an on-site search but nearly 84% of companies don’t optimize or measure on-site search behavior. Customers who use on site-search are more likely to convert or return with the intent to purchase, but they will also remember if their search experience was good or bad. By measuring on-site search, you receive first hand feedback on what your customers are looking for and the best way to optimize and enhance content. Analysis: JP Sherman, Moz Blog
