Industry Update: Top Search Marketing News from September

Google To Sunset ETAs in June 2022

Advertisers will no longer be able to create new ETAs or edit existing ETAs starting in June 2022. Google recommends one RSA per ad group to prepare for this change, which allows time to test before full shift to RSAs

Best Practice: Pin headlines or descriptions to specific positions in your responsive search ads. This is going to be especially important in heavily regulated industries.

Bottom Line – this seems to be yet another step in Google’s push towards automation.

Microsoft Ads Announces Optimization Score

An optimization score is now available on the “Recommendations” tab in Bing. It’s showcased alongside a list of recommendations tailored to your account (similar to Google).
If a recommendation isn’t applicable, you’re able to just dismiss is, which will improve the score.

Google’s John Mueller on the Page Title Update

If the original title tag is already targeting a high-value keyword, and that keyword isn’t featured in Google’s replacement, rest assured it’s still being used by Google’s search ranking algorithms.

One question we keep seeing following the rollout of the title tag update is whether websites should change their titles to the ones Google chooses.

Mueller says no, that’s not recommended. Google’s replacements aren’t superior titles by default, nor will they necessarily improve rankings if they were coded into the website.

PageSpeed Insight Update Incoming…

PageSpeed Insights updated to Lighthouse 8.4, which improves LCP. When Lazy Load HTML is added as an attribute to images, the browser knew to not download the images outside the viewport until a user scrolled. The issue occurs when elements are in the LCP viewport. Lighthouse 8.4 aims to fix that bug.

Every week, the digital marketing analysts at Rocket Clicks round up the most interesting, exhilarating and dare we say controversial news to share with the team. We’ve collected the most notable PPC & SEO news from August to share with you here… Reach out to us if you’re ready to take your internet marketing to the next level!