This Week’s Industry News
Compiled by the Rocket Clicks Team
Top Stories
Product Listing Ads Changed to Carousels
Google has recently made a change to their Product Listing Ads, AKA Shopping Ads, specifically for desktop searches. The 4-5 non-scrolling shopping ads now appear in carousel format while still appearing on the right side of the search results page. Experts believe that this is just another step in the process of making desktop results more closely match the mobile results page. Source: The SEM Post
Google Knows What Your Site Did Last Summer (and Doesn’t Forget)
In a recent Webmaster Office Hours chat, Google’s John Mueller confirmed something that many SEOs have long suspected: while the ranking algorithms are mostly functioning on a real-time basis, they still take the overall history of the page or site they’re evaluating into account. Although Mueller didn’t clarify how much weight historical signals carry with the algorithms, the fact that he mentioned it probably means it’s a point of emphasis for Google. Source: The SEM Post
Deleting Your Google Account Will Not Stop Your AdWords Campaigns
An advertiser recently reached out via Twitter to ask Google AdWords a rather interesting question: Will deleting your Google account linked to your Google AdWords campaign stop the campaigns from running? No, they will not. If you delete your Google account, the campaigns will continue to run and you will no longer have access to stop them from running through that account. So if you want to stop your campaigns from running, you may want to rule out deleting your Google account as an option. Source: Search Engine Roundtable
It’s Splittin’ Time for Google’s Index
Since the beginning, Google has used one index to rule them all. Now, after years of speculation, Google has officially announced that it will transition to a two-index format – one for mobile and one for desktop. Details are slowly trickling out and this change won’t take effect for at least a few months, but it has already been revealed that the mobile index will act as the primary index while the desktop index will be secondary and updated or refreshed less frequently. Source: Search Engine Land
Additional Commentary
How to Make Your Vacation Stress-Free from PPC
PPC Hero Kristine Hyman knows how hard PPC Analysts work and how often they don’t miss work. She gives three helpful steps for keeping your vacation stress free from PPC. First, introduce your fill in so the client knows that their account will be getting the attention it deserves while you are out. Step two is to create a plan for your fill in by including how the reports will be done or if there are any budget goals for the week. The author’s last step is to debrief with your fill in when you return and to show them your appreciation. Source: Kristine Hyman, PPC Hero
Why Didn’t You Recover from Penguin?
Now that the effects of the Penguin update are starting to set in, Dr. Peter J. Meyers offers up several scenarios that might account for your site’s failure to recover from Penguin-related penalties. The five scenarios that Meyers proposes are 1) your site may not have recovered because there is actually no Penguin algorithm to recover from 2) the update is still rolling out 3) you didn’t do a good enough job of removing bad links 4) even without bad backlinks, you still have no link equity to speak of 5) Penguin was never the problem in the first place. Source: Dr. Peter J. Meyers, Moz Blog
