This Week’s Industry News
Compiled by the Rocket Clicks Team
Top Stories
Bing to Support AdWords Expanded Text Ads
Bing Ads recently announced that they will be supporting Google AdWords expanded text ads through AdWords imports. Bing has been bombarded with questions regarding whether they would support it or not and it comes as a relief to many advertisers knowing that they will. Bing stated that this will “save you time and get you started with Expanded Text Ads on Bing Ads even faster.” Source: Search Engine Roundtable
Keyword Top Level Domains Don’t Lead to Top Level Rankings
Recently, a post on Search Engine Land titled “Can moving to a new TLD boost search rankings?” documented a lawyer’s move from a .com to a .attorney TLD. While the authors of this sponsored post attributed their increase in organic traffic to this change, Google representatives John Mueller and Gary Illyes took to Twitter to clarify that Google doesn’t take keyword-targeted TLDs into consideration. Source: Search Engine Roundtable
AdWords Integrates Salesforce to Provide Offline Conversions
To bridge the gap between online and offline, Google announced they will integrate with Salesforce to provide offline conversion data. Google stated that “AdWords Conversion Import for Salesforce measures the value of your offline conversions that result from online AdWords Clicks.” All you need to do is link your AdWords and Salesforce accounts to get these metrics. Source: Search Engine Roundtable
Software Website Hit by Manual Action Penalty for Thin Content
Softonic.com, a major player in the online software world, was recently hit with a devastating manual action penalty by Google. Because of this penalty, Softonic has suffered a 40% loss in visibility on Google US and anywhere from a 33% to a 61% loss in various European countries. In his post on Sistrix.com, Juan Gonzalez blames Softonic’s use of site search results pages for this penalty. Source: Search Engine Watch
Additional Commentary
Kobe Bryant Teaches You How to Be an AdWords Pro
Todd Saunders shares three lessons Kobe Bryant can teach us about AdWords. First: Study the game film. The author gave an example of an intern’s AdWords knowledge increasing exponentially after watching 65 online tutorial videos they recorded. Second: Play without the ball. Similar to how Shaq and Kobe would practice plays on the court without a ball prior to a game, you can use the Ad Preview tool to simulate the real thing. Finally: Get creative. Kobe went up against many opponents in his day so he needed to get creative to beat every single one of them. Just like that, the PPC landscape is always changing and you need to be creative to stay on top. Analysis: Todd Saunders, Search Engine Land
Are related sitewide footer links the key to dominating Google?
In this study of how media conglomerates manipulate Google, Chris Lake examines the tactics they use and data from the search results to see whether or not the rich get richer. Lake points out that, on the Hearst-owned Cosmopolitan.com, the anchor text and position of individual footer links that pointed to sister sites were continuously shuffled in order to give them more authority. By studying the effect this strategy had on one of Hearst’s newest websites, BestProducts.com, Lake was able to conclude that it turned out to be very effective. Analysis: Chris Lake, Search Engine Watch
