Archive for the ‘seo news’ Category
Thursday, June 1st, 2023
Google has been sending policy violation notices to Local Service Ads advertisers, but it is currently unclear if these are being sent out due to new enhanced enforcement or if there was a bug that triggered these from going out.
The policy notice. The email notification reads, “Your account has policy violations that need to be resolved.” It goes on to say that “if you do not take action by 12 of June, your ads could stop running.” Here is a screenshot of the email notification sent to me by Jason Brown:
When you click through t to “view policy issues” you are taken to a screen that shows you your policy violations, but when you dig deeper, you likely won’t have an issue listed. This screenshot is from Crystal Horton, who posted it on Twitter.
Some say this notice was sent to mostly garage door repair listings, but I am not sure if that is 100% validated or not.
Bug or not. Ginny Marvin, Google’s Ads Liaison, is currently looking into if this is a bug or not. Last night at around 5:50 pm ET, Ginny posted on Twitter, “I don’t have an update, but the team is looking into it.”
Why we care. If you received this notice, for now, wait, check back here to see when Google gives us more clarity on the issue. At least according to the email, you have 12 days to act on this before it becomes a potential issue for your ads.
The post Google Local Service Ads mass policy violations appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Wednesday, May 31st, 2023
Microsoft released a number of improvements to Bing Chat, including an Android home widget, improved sports scores and other updates for SwiftKey, the company announced. This is in addition to the other changes, including Bing being added as the default search provider for ChatGPT.
Android home widget. There is now a new Bing Chat widget that you can enable on your Android device’s Home screen. Once you install it, there will be a Bing icon will take you directly to Bing Chat.
Here is how that looks:
Improved sports scores. Bing Chat said it improved its “sports grounding,” adding they have “taken steps to help Bing Chat give better answers if you’re asking questions about sports topics — including games, schedules, stats, and standings across a variety of sports.”
Here is me asking for sports scores this morning:
Other changes. Bing also announced a number of changes to SwiftKey including how to compose messages in SwiftKey, new tones in SwiftKey when composing messages and new translator in SwiftKey for iOS.
Why we care. Now your sports score searches in Bing Chat should be a bit better, plus if you use Android, you can now access Bing Chat using the Android widgets. Don’t you just love these improvements?
The post Bing Chat gains Android home widget and improved sports scores appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Wednesday, May 31st, 2023
Successful search marketers need to keep up with the latest trends and tactics while seamlessly executing on a day-to-day basis. Make this the year you…
- Boost PPC productivity and performance with generative AI
- Increase SERP visibility with structured data and schema testing
- Effectively test different RSAs to boost PPC revenue
- Confidently configure GA4 for your business needs
- Optimize your ad campaigns and drive conversions
- Drive up indexing for maximum content visibility
- Craft effective ChatGPT prompts that yield targeted results
… and much, much more. Attend SMX Advanced, online June 13-14, to learn actionable, expert-level tactics that will give you an edge over the competition and set you up for a winning Q3 and beyond — all for free, and all without leaving your desk.
Each day kicks off with an exclusive keynote from Google and Microsoft:
- Jumpstart your SMX experience with a straight-from-the-source keynote featuring Cathy Edwards, VP of Google Search, and Michael Schechter, Vice President of Bing Growth and Distribution at Microsoft. Together with Search Engine Land’s own Barry Schwartz, they will discuss how Google and Bing are incorporating generative and conversational AI into their search engines and what it means for SEOs.
- Launch into day 2 with another conversational AI keynote featuring Kya Sainbury-Carter, Corporate Vice President at Microsoft Advertising. Kya and Search Engine Land contributor Greg Finn will explore the impact of conversational search on PPC and how you can adapt your PPC strategies to remain competitive.
And that’s just the start. Your free pass also unlocks…
- The entire expert-level agenda programmed by the Search Engine Land editors
- Advanced, actionable tactics to overcome critical SEO and PPC obstacles
- Live Q&A (Overtime!) where you’ll get specific answers in real-time
- 5 invigorating Coffee Talk meetups on GA4, automated bidding, ChatGPT, and more
- Live and on-demand access so you can train at your convenience
- A personalized certificate of attendance and digital badge
Don’t miss this once-a-year opportunity to participate in a free online training program that speaks to your degree of expertise, connects you with peers who are on your level, and delivers actionable tactics that will take your search campaigns to a greater level of success. Secure your free All Access pass now!
Psst… Have you heard? The 2023 Search Engine Land Awards are open for entries! Don’t miss your opportunity to boost team morale, attract new business, and stand apart from the competition… enter now!
The post SMX Advanced kicks off in two weeks… don’t miss out! appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Wednesday, May 31st, 2023
Building consumer trust is crucial for marketers. But how is that trust built in a future without cookies?
This webinar will explore how brands can use choice, control, and transparency to create personalized, permission-based experiences that minimize compliance risk and drive marketing ROI without relying on third-party cookies.
Learn more by registering for and attending “Trust Matters: Building Consumer Confidence in a Cookieless World,” presented by OneTrust.
Click here to view more Search Engine Land webinars.
The post Webinar: How to build consumer trust in a cookieless world appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Wednesday, May 31st, 2023
About a week ago, Google did its last batch of moving sites to mobile-first indexing and some mobile-friendly sites were still noticing their sites were being reported as being crawled using desktop indexing. It turns out, there is a reporting bug in Google Search Console that may show the wrong mobile indexing status for some sites.
What Google said. Google’s John Mueller posted on Twitter a few minutes ago about the issue. John wrote, “It looks like we’re also showing the wrong mobile indexing status for some sites in Search Console, which is a reporting issue on our side (and also not related to mobile friendliness).”
Where to check. To check your indexing status, login to Google Search Console, click on the “Settings” link on the left side bar and then look under the “about” section to see your indexing status.
Why we care. So if you are nervous after noticing Google reporting that your mobile-friendly site(s) were being reported as crawled using desktop indexing, it might be a bug. Check back in a week or so to see if things have changed.
The post Google Search Console shows the wrong mobile indexing status for some sites appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Tuesday, May 30th, 2023
Microsoft Ads will start collecting more website data through its Universal Event Tracking Tag to power UET Insights, a new dashboard for advertisers to launch in June.
The dashboard. Data will be available in near real-time and won’t be sampled on the new dashboard. It will include these metrics:
- Session count.
- Popular pages.
- Device breakdown.
- Country breakdown.
- Quick backs (the number of sessions where a visitor navigated to a page, then quickly returned to the previous page during the selected time period).
- Average active time.
Here’s a preview of what the UET Insights dashboard looks like:
New data signals. Additional website performance signals captured by the UET Tag will include:
- Page latencies (speed and load times).
- Click and scroll interactions.
- Purchase cart details.
- Cart abandonment details.
- Browser-based signals.
- JavaScript browser errors.
Starting June 29. That’s the date when Microsoft will automatically enable UET Insights on all existing UET tags. UET Insights will be enabled by default on all newly created tags.
Opting out. Before UET Insights is enabled:
- Complete an opt-out form by June 26 to disable the automatic upgrade.
After UET Insights is enabled:
- Disable one tag: Navigate to Tools > UET tag, select your tag. Hover over UET Insights, select the pencil icon. You’ll get a pop-up, Edit your insights setting. Set the toggle to off.
- Disable multiple tags: Go to the All Tags page, select all the tags you want and choose Disable Insights.
Why we care. Microsoft says the goal here is to help advertisers better understand user engagement and improve ad targeting. Hopefully this new data can help advertisers improve ROI and drive more traffic and conversions.
About UET Tags. Launched (then on Bing Ads) in 2014, a sitewide UET tag powers conversion tracking, remarketing and automated bidding strategies on Microsoft Ads.
The post Microsoft Ads to launch UET Insights dashboard with new traffic data appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Friday, May 26th, 2023
Google will look much different in 2033 – where conversation is the interface rather than the search box.
That’s according to Mustafa Suleyman, cofounder of DeepMind (which Google bought in 2014), in an interview on the No Priors Podcast.
Why we care. ChatGPT, the new Bing and Google’s new Search Generative Experience are all huge signals of a major shift in search. Clearly, nothing will change immediately. But in the coming years these changes could potentially upend the way Google – as the dominant search engine – has shaped the web and, as a byproduct, SEO and PPC.
The search dialogue. Google is “an appallingly painful” conversation right now, where the answer comes in the form of 10 blue links (though Suleyman didn’t mention all the search features and ads that also act as “answers” on today’s SERPs).
Google learns from the results people click on, how long they spend on websites and whether they come back to the search box to refine their search or click on other results. He added:
- “The problem is [Google’s] using 1980s Yellow Pages to have that conversation. And actually now we can do that conversation in fluent natural language.”
Google rewards engagement, not answers. Google has shaped content production in a way that favors optimizing for ads and rewards content creators for keeping people on pages longer, Suleyman said.
- “You go on a webpage and all the text has been broken out into sub bullets and subheaders separated by ads. You spend five to seven or 10 seconds just scrolling through the page to find the snippet of the answer that you actually wanted. But most of the time you’re just looking for a quick snippet. … that looks like high-quality content to Google and it’s ‘engaging’.”
From ‘speaking Google’ to ‘speaking to AI.’ Suleyman believes we’re nearing a point where searchers will no longer have to think “How do I change my query and write this?”
- “We’ve learned to speak Google. It’s a crazy environment. We’ve learned to Google, right? That’s just a weird lexicon that we’ve co-developed with Google over 20 years. No, now that has to stop. That’s over. That moment is done and we can now talk to computers in fluent natural language, and that is the new interface.”
Bottom line. Suleyman believes Google should be “pretty worried” that the Google search we know today won’t be the same in 10 years.
- “It’s not going to happen overnight. There’s going to be a transition. But these kind of succinct, dynamic, personalized, interactive moments are clearly the future in my opinion.”
Google CEO on Search in 10 years. In a recent interview, Google CEO Sundar Pichai was asked whether we are nearing the end of link-based search and 10 blue links. Pichai said search will be “more ambiently available to users in radically different ways” compared to today, adding:
- “I think the experience will evolve substantively over the next decade. We have to meet users in terms of what they are looking for.”
Watch the interview. The video is embedded below. Or, if you prefer, you can read the transcript.
The post Google Search of today won’t exist in 10 years, says DeepMind co-founder appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Thursday, May 25th, 2023
In the world of content creation and customer experience, AI’s ability to alleviate tedious tasks has been hyped. However, for a successful digital asset management strategy, librarians still know best how to generate and manage complex information libraries using metadata.
In this webinar, content experts will explain what content creators, managers and users need to know to ensure you can find, use and control your content in order to deliver maximum value.
Register and attend “Metadata, SEO, and ChatGPT: What’s DAM Got To Do With It?” presented by Acquia.
Click here to view more Search Engine Land webinars.
The post SEO and ChatGPT: What’s DAM got to do with it? appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Thursday, May 25th, 2023
Under budget constraints but also under pressure to generate growth, marketing and marketing ops leaders have been taking a close look at the ROI on martech solutions.
We want to know what conclusions you have been reaching. Have you been consolidating your existing stack? Have you been gambling on promising new tools? Are you perhaps reducing your tech holdings?
The need for better features. The 2022 survey showed solutions being replaced in a quest for better features, in particular:
- Better integrations/open API.
- Improved data capabilities.
- Ability to measure ROI.
- Better customer experience.
Those were all higher on the list than cost. What, if anything, has changed?
We’re in a very different place than we were just a year ago. The world opened for business again. Many people returned to the workplace. It was no longer necessary to do almost everything – from shopping to hanging out with friends – digitally.
That doesn’t mean we’ve abandoned our multi-faceted digital environments. We discovered that many virtual experiences worked just fine. There was, however, something of a deceleration in digital transformation (after the insane acceleration of 2020), arguably leading to the retrenchment we saw in a number of marketing tech companies that had perhaps grown too fast.
Taking the temperature. Against a backdrop of economic uncertainty, our hunch is that there’s still a thirst out there for innovation, for tech-enhanced efficiency, and for better-supported data-based decision making. After all, marketers have hardly hesitated to get their hands on generative AI.
But we need data to see whether our hunch is right. So please take about three minutes or so to complete our Replacement Survey and let us know how your martech world is evolving.
The 2023 MarTech Replacement Survey is here.
The post Are you getting the most from your martech stack? Take the 2023 Replacement Survey appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Thursday, May 25th, 2023
TikTok is testing an AI chatbot in select markets. Called Tako, the AI-powered tool is meant to help TikTok users with search and discovery.
Why we care. Google has acknowledged that TikTok is a threat. So we’re watching closely as TikTok makes moves to improve search on its platform, as well as testing search ads.
What it looks like. Here’s how TechCrunch described it:
“It will appear on the right-hand side of the TikTok interface, above the user’s profile and other buttons for likes, comments and bookmarks. When tapped, users can ask Tako various questions about the video using natural language queries or discover new content by asking for recommendations.”
Here’s a screenshot:
Image source: TechCrunch
What TikTok is saying. TikTok confirmed the AI chatbot is being tested with select users in the Philippines, via Twitter:
- “We’re in the early stages of exploring chatbot tools with a limited test of Tako with select users in the Philippines. Tako is an AI-powered tool to help with search and discovery on TikTok. Tako is powered by a third-party chat assistant and is designed to help make it easier to discover entertaining and inspiring content on TikTok. No current plans for this beyond these early tests, but we’re excited to hear your feedback!”
Google’s TikTok threat. Google revealed a surprising stat last year: that 40% of young people go to TikTok or Instagram (not Google Maps of Search) when searching for a place to eat lunch. That was according to Google Senior Vice President Prabhakar Raghavan, citing internal research of U.S. users between the ages of 18 and 24. He also noted these newer Internet users search differently.
TikTok is not a search engine like Google, which crawls the entire web. TikTok is basically an internal search engine – like YouTube, which is often called the second biggest search engine. And this new AI chatbot, if rolled out globally, could let TikTok users discover content via chat rather than typing in a search box.
The post TikTok tests AI chatbot for search and discovery appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
