This Week’s Industry News
Compiled By Rocket Clicks Staff

Top Stories

Penguin Refresh Is Coming Soon 

Speaking at Search Marketing Expo East, Google’s Gary Illyes said that a Penguin algorithm refresh could be coming as early as next week. He went on to say that this was going to be a major re-write and will make life a bit easier for webmasters and a lot better for searchers. Additionally, it was noted that Penguin refreshes are going to more frequent due to the new algorithm moving forward.

Source: Search Engine Land

Automatic Item Updated for PLAs Now Available for AdWords

Just in time for the holiday shopping rush, Google has introduced an automatic item updated for product listing ads. This new feature should help advertisers decrease the amount of ad disapprovals they get when item specifics in ads don’t match site and inventory data. Participants of the beta have seen a 50% reduction in price related item disapprovals. Advertisers should note that this feature will only work with the use of schema.org microdata on their sites.

Source: Search Engine Land

Anti-Google Consortium Attacks Map Pack

An anti-Google consortium known as “Focus on the User” have launched a campaign that argues against Google+ Local search results. The consortium is made up of Yelp, TripAdvisor, Consumer Watchdog and other companies aiming to convince Google to force Google+ Local pages to compete with local review sites for placement on the SERPs. More info on the group’s argument against Google can be found on focusontheuser.eu

Source: Search Engine Land

Google Adds New Ad Formats & Tools for Mobile

In preparation for the much discussed “mobile take-over” of ads, Google has released new display ad formats and tools for mobile. New formats include a mobile light box engagement ad that dynamically resizes, in-app video ads that use TrueView videos, and magazine style text ads. New tools will also be available to help advertisers convert existing ad formats. Google expects new formats to increase mobile ad click through rates.

Source: Marketing Land

Study Reveals Click Through Rate Data For Organic

A new study by Advanced Web Ranking sheds light on fresh data on click through rates for organic searches. 71.33% of searches resulted in a click on page one, while page two and three only received 5.59% of clicks. The first five results alone made up 67.60% of clicks. A full breakdown of the study can be found on Marketing Land.

Source: Marketing Land

 

Additional Headlines

 

Bing Won’t Treat HTTPS The Same As Google

Bing Introduces Enhanced Sitelinks For US Advertisers

Snack Company Mondelez Makes Ad Deal With YouTube

Google Explains Their Crawl Habits

AdWords Named As Winner Of Carousel Eye-Tracking Study

Google Introduces Estimated Conversions To Display Ads

Yahoo Retiring 60 Products And Services

 

Notable Commentary

 

Appearance Of Answer Boxes Sees Significant Increase

With the Panda 4.1 rollout, more and more answer boxes have shown in the search results pages. Dr. Peter J. Meyers of The Moz Blog analyzes the increase and offers an additional experiment on how he attempted to change the answer in an answer box. The full report can be read on The Moz Blog.

Analysis by: Dr. Peter J. Meyers, The Moz Blog

New AdWords Script Eliminates Close Variants for Exact Match

In response to Google’s elimination of true exact match keywords, a script has been written to block search queries that are “close variants”. This script works by pulling search query data and adding negatives for anything that is not the exact match keyword being bid on. This script can be placed at the MCC, campaign, and ad group level.
Analysis: Daniel Gilbert, Search Engine Land

One Thing Is Never Enough For Perfect SEO

Mark Jackson of Search Engine Watch explains that there is not one single thing that is going to help you improve your results for SEO. As he puts it, SEO is not a one trick pony. He emphasizes that while content is king, that alone is too simple of an approach. Jackson goes on to examine the landscape of today’s SEO and all of the ingredients to SEO success.

Analysis by: Mark Jackson, Search Engine Watch