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WebPageTest’s new Opportunities and Experiments: test practically anything

Written on June 7, 2022 at 3:23 pm, by admin

There’s never been a better time than now for a web developer’s approach to SEO.

The pace at which tools and resources, both new tools and anything familiar, innovate and open options for us also demand that we keep up. Recently, that has meant more requirements for performance optimization as Google releases algorithm updates and changes to metrics calculations.

One tool that you should be familiar with is WebPageTest. They recently released some incredibly useful new fully integrated test tools.

WebPageTest now proxies real-time user-specified HTML modifications through Netlify to run comparison tests right inside their user interface. No coding is required.

Genius makes sense

Smart application logic in three huge areas of concern bubble findings up for you, but not just with text blurbs, with re-test options prepped for you to run combinations of variations for comparison. The array of tests available in WebPageTest now means there will be no more setting up tests using third-party proxy tools that duplicate what you can test directly.

This was all technically possible before and the original approach continues to have importance.

Although impressively comprehensive, there will always be tests you will need to run using a proxy host of your choice. This requires handling JavaScript and Cloudflare, however.

With WebPageTest you get to point and click.

Pesky lab data

Always keep in mind the best possible combination of numbers from lab tests may not yield the same numbers in the field. It can actually result in broken website features.

Scripts and styles have developer-defined load order where any change can mean a breaking change that is not suitable for production. A proxy host can provide access for QA as part of the optimization process.

With that warning out of the way, let us tell you how great it is having a testbed for demonstrating HTML optimizations. It’s been the basis of our workshops and conference sessions now for well over a year.

Our Search Engine Land guide articles can help you set up a testbed. We’ll be using an updated version at SMX Advanced. Join us live if you can make it.

Opportunities

WebPageText’s Opportunities text is available to everyone in reports.

You won’t need JavaScript skills to run HTML variation comparisons anymore. Instead, you will need a paid account to run built-in proxy tests labeled Experiments.

The free account gives you better access to reports and history, but not running Experiments. You can still write JavaScript and proxy your own tests for free.

It’s just nowhere near as handy and it takes up way too much time.

Free opportunities. Paid account for experiments.

Experiments

Select the Opportunities & Experiments menu item in a WebPageTest report and you will be presented with a comprehensive list of findings.

Opportunities here are derived from real-world test conditions (simulated with hardware where possible). Our test indicated an opportunity to re-test experimenting with render-blocking resource variations (typically JavaScript and CSS), lazy loaded images, self-host third-party script and much more.

Pro Account Required for Variations

Test async, defer, or even inline scripts and stylesheets using the interface. We’ve been writing Cloudflare Worker JavaScript to proxy these tests and we also added inline style rules to defer loading content towards the bottom of the page, including the footer. The initial array of WebPageTest integrations can handle most, but not all, of our original tests.

It’s a snap to put tests together now.

Modify test settings and start running variations to hone in on the holy grail of green Core Web Vitals across the board. The offering is amazingly comprehensive and covers far more than what affects a webpages’s performance.

You’ll find three categories which group opportunities to experiment by the following questions:

• Is it quick? Quickness categorizes and groups performance optimization experiments.
• Is it usable? Usability groups HTML validation errors that can mess with screen readers and things that affect layout shifts.
• Is it resilient? Resiliency goes to security concerns including mixed protocols. Modify test settings with a checkbox interface and start running variations. You will get refined options in the comparison report.

Dashboard for a test suite

WebPageTest has to resemble a dashboard for a test suite and manage to do that inside reporting that provides more detail than Lighthouse, and with far better waterfall chart representation than Chrome Dev Tools.

Although it’s true with point and click you can run HTML experiments in a “no-code” environment, the detail provided and navigation requires experience – and coding experience is best.

A new built-in Experiment replicates another Cloudflare worker task by removing all JavaScript. Having stuff like that so accessible is exceptionally handier than writing a script for test variations.

Advanced Experiments allow us to insert HTML in key locations, test tactics to change load order, fail to load, or modify, including minify, resources.

There’s literally nothing technically stopping us from testing practically anything on any page.

Fall into the pit of success

Comparison reports themselves serve to funnel you into selecting and re-testing more variations. The result metrics banner includes color-coded improving and worsening scores between control and experiment.

A remaining opportunities section with a subset of experiment switches appears below. You can click your way through to significant improvement.

We’ve done the hard work to write tests for demonstration at SMX Advanced and when we’re live you can expect us to cover this major update to the very tools we used. It’s going to be so much easier.

We will see if the rapid text cycle of WebPageTest experiment integrations gain what we were already preparing to deliver. Let’s see if we can get to green across the board.

The post WebPageTest’s new Opportunities and Experiments: test practically anything appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing

Meta rumored to develop ‘Basic Ads’ in response to recent privacy changes

Written on June 7, 2022 at 3:23 pm, by admin

Meta Platforms’ Facebook is reportedly in the early stages of planning a Basic Ads product. Basic Ads would be aimed at advertisers who are looking to build awareness around their brands. 

What are Basic Ads? A Basic Ads product would offer and report only the simplest metrics such as engagement and video views.

With the release of iOS14 in 2020, and the option for users to opt-out to having their data collected, Facebook advertisers are having a more difficult time reporting on performance.

The initial response. Since Meta hasn’t officially announced the new product, little has been said about it in the advertising community. But Facebook veteran Curt Maly of Black Box Social Media, who is aware of Meta’s plans, said it’s interesting to think how a basic product with no targeting and no objectives would be beneficial. 

“More than 90% of all the online marketers I know are focused on direct response where efforts can be directly tracked… with this basic ads platform, it appears that tracking will be rather difficult,” Maly said. “Branding and awareness are used by larger companies with deeper pockets, most small businesses can’t compete with a brand who spends money ‘branding,’ small business owners need/want to drive results now.”

He added that brand new online advertisers and ad vets flock to Facebook to see fast results from targeting, conversion objectives and tracking results.

“If these three major goal lines are moved, I think we will be seeing a lot more people flock to Google/YouTube ads, TikTok ads and Apple’s new ad platform,” Maly said. “I mean Apple didn’t update iOS to ‘help protect users.’ Apple collects all the info they block on Facebook, Apple is about to get into the ad platform game once again and this is yet another reason for people to flock to a better ad platform.”

Privacy changes impact on Meta revenue. Meta estimates a $12.8 billion hit to their revenue in 2022 due to the Apple changes. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also reports “unprecedented levels of competition” from new platforms such as TikTok.

In April, Meta laid out a three-tier plan to save its ad business in the wake of Apple’s privacy crackdown. At the time, Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg described the strategy as “doing more with less data.”

Meta’s response. Facebook declined to comment on the new product. There has not been a release date for a rollout, though Business Insider reports testing to start in the EU ahead of the U.S.

Why we care. The Facebook ads platform was previously known for its wide range of targeted audiences and demographic options. As of late, it seems like a lot of advertisers and businesses are moving away from the platform, reporting a decline in performance. Basic Ads could be a good alternative if they’re able to follow GDPR regulations while still providing useful targeting options.

Basic Ads may work well for household names such as Nike or Netflix whose goals are engagement and awareness. But smaller businesses that rely on more granular targeting and lead generation, such as courses for business owners, or youth soccer camp registrations, may have a more difficult time and may abandon Facebook for good. 

The post Meta rumored to develop ‘Basic Ads’ in response to recent privacy changes appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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How your PPC conversions will be impacted without privacy-first measurement

Written on June 7, 2022 at 3:23 pm, by admin

Within the next 12-15 months, third-party cookies will retire across digital marketing channels.

Savvy advertisers know they need to begin developing a game plan for the cookieless future, but what will happen to those who don’t adapt to these changes?

Above all, marketers will suffer from signal loss, which will negatively impact how we measure campaign performance, optimize campaigns over time, create audiences for ad distribution and drive growth within our digital channels. 

The industry sea change with the lion’s share of attention is the retirement of third-party cookies in Google Chrome.

Sure, other browsers, including Microsoft Edge, Apple Safari and Mozilla Firefox, have previously restricted third-party cookies. Chrome is more monumental simply because of its market share.

SimilarWeb recently released a study that showed Chrome was the world’s most popular browser with 62% of web traffic. 

To recap from my previous article, Google Chrome will retire third-party tracking cookies around Q3 2023. That is an approximate timeframe for this monumental change, but it gives us a target to make sure that our digital marketing campaigns will be ready.

This might sound like the distant future, but many of the measurement solutions needed to replace the functionality of third-party cookies could require significant time and effort from development teams.

This type of support usually requires a few cycles to be prioritized on project roadmaps.

Getting started in the next couple of months will be beneficial in the long run.

Look at it this way: your future self will thank you for being thoughtful and proactive!

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What happens when marketers do not build new measurement frameworks?

For over two decades, marketers have utilized third-party publisher cookies to track their media performance. This method isn’t perfect, but it’s been a standard practice that’s set to evolve in a major way during the next 12-15 months.

From a digital marketing perspective, one of the most significant impacts is the loss of conversion measurement. This loss of performance data includes sales, sign-ups, purchases, revenue and other engagement metrics since those actions are likely to be restricted.

If marketers do not evolve their measurement practices, their accounts will rely on algorithmically-driven modeled conversions. 

Successfully enabling automation within PPC is critical to driving positive results.

One of the most potent algorithmic elements is smart bidding. Algorithms that drive cost-per-acquisition (CPA) and return-on-ad-spend (ROAS) bidding need strong data signals to optimize performance.

The data that feeds these algorithms must be reliable so that accounts are optimized toward the most valuable actions and this conversion data needs to have enough volume to drive machine learning.

Data loss means bid algorithms will not function properly, which will result in decreased PPC performance. Let’s try to avoid this!

More conversions will be algorithmically modeled as a result of signal loss

There is too much at stake (i.e., money) for ad platforms such as Google and Microsoft to leave marketers without another option to gain back lost data.

When marketers forge new measurement frameworks via Enhanced Conversions (EC), Google Analytics 4 or Offline Conversion Tracking, those are considered Observed Conversions.

This mix of first-party data and user-matched data (EC) is generated by registered actions taken by our website visitors.

Try to collect as much observed conversion data as possible.

The alternative is Modeled Conversions in Google and Smart Goals in Microsoft Ads. According to Google, Modeled Conversions is:

“When Google surfaces modeled conversions in Google Ads, we are predicting attributed conversions. In most cases, Google will receive ad interactions and online conversions but is missing the linkage between the two. The modeling we perform is modeling whether a Google ad interaction led to the online conversion, not whether a conversion happened or not.” 

Even after these large-scale privacy shifts, Google will continue to acquire mountains of data per user: search history, browsing history, and any other online activity when someone is logged into their Google Account, especially when those signed-in users are on a Google property.

Google will not be able to install a tracking pixel for that user specifically, but they should have enough data to algorithmically predict which media interactions lead to a conversion for an advertiser. 

Microsoft Ads is working on a version of conversion modeling. This product is called Smart Goals.

According to Microsoft:

“Smart Goals use Microsoft Advertising machine learning models to identify the best sessions on your website. If you have the UET tag set up correctly, the smart goal will examine all your website sessions and determine which of those sessions can be considered a ‘conversion.’ Smart goals use multiple signals to identify conversions. Some of the signals that are used include session duration, pages per session, location, device and browser.”

In essence, they are similar to Google’s modeled conversions. They both rely on machine learning at scale to understand user behavior and potential reactions to paid media exposure.

Marketers need to provide numerous additional signals to make any modeled conversions as accurate as possible.

With the loss of user-level data, modeled conversions will be part of the measurement landscape going into 2023.

This brings us back to creating a strong framework for supplying as much Observed Conversion data within the platforms, which will help inform the Modeled Conversion algorithms. 

Marketers have time and tactics to forge new measurement frameworks

The prospect of rebuilding your measurement framework can feel daunting, but you have the next couple of quarters to determine which solutions work best for you and your business.

Now is the time to start evaluating your current processes, review the new measurement tactics that are currently available and begin building a plan. 

In my last article, we laid the groundwork for what this metamorphosis means for the digital marketing landscape and approximately when it should occur. This article has addressed why adapting to these changes needs to be a strategic priority.

Next time, we can begin drafting a plan on how you can build a privacy-centric measurement and audience framework for 2023. 

The post How your PPC conversions will be impacted without privacy-first measurement appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Courtesy of Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing

Ahrefs reveals its new search engine: Yep

Written on June 6, 2022 at 12:11 pm, by admin

Did you forget that SEO toolset provider Ahrefs announced plans to build its own search engine in 2019?

If you answered “yep,” you aren’t alone. 

Ahrefs has been busy in those three years since, investing $60 million of its own money into launching a new search engine, called Yep. 

What is Yep? 

Yep is a general-purpose web search engine. Yep will soon be available in all countries and in most languages. 

Ahrefs is positioning it as a Googe competitor. However, we’ve seen plenty of Google competitors and Google “killers” come and go over the past two decades. So for now, let’s just call it a Google alternative.

So what is Yep banking on to become a true Google alternative? Two things: 

Privacy

Yep will not collect personal information (e.g., geolocation, name, age, gender) by default. Your Yep search history will not be stored anywhere.

What Yep will rely on is aggregated search statistics to improve algorithms, spelling corrections, and search suggestions, the company said.

“In other words, we do save certain data on searches, but never in a personally identifiable way,” said Ahrefs CEO Dmytro Gerasymenko. “For example, we will track how many times a word is searched for and the position of the link getting the most clicks. But we won’t create your profile for targeted advertising.”

What Yep will use is a searcher’s:

• Entered keywords.
• Language preference received from the browser.
• Approximate geographical area at the origin of the search at the scale of a region or a city (deduced from the IP address).

Profit-Sharing

The plan for Ahrefs’ search engine is a 90/10 profit-sharing model, where Ahrefs shares 90% of its advertising profits with content publishers. 

The reason: Google displays content in its search results, without the need to actually click through to the website. That means websites are losing traffic. And for many sites, less traffic means less revenue. 

“Creators who make search results possible deserve to receive payments for their work,” Gerasymenko said. “We saw how YouTube’s profit-sharing model made the whole video-making industry thrive. Splitting advertising profits 90/10 with content authors, we want to give a push towards treating talent fairly in the search industry.” 

Here’s what Yep says:

“Let’s say that the biggest search engine in the world makes $100B a year. Now, imagine if they gave $90B to content creators and publishers.

Wikipedia would probably earn a few billion dollars a year from its content. They’d be able to stop asking for donations and start paying the people who polish their articles a decent salary.

There would be no more need for paywalls and affiliate links, so publishers who’ve had to resort to chasing traffic with clickbait articles and filling their pages with ads would be able to get back to doing investigative pieces and quality analysis. A citizen journalist uncovering corruption on the side of a full-time job could get compensated without having to spend time trying to monetize content.

And the best thing? You don’t have to be an expert to benefit.

Let’s say that you love pancakes more than anything else in the world. Now you have an incentive to grow that passion – imagine getting fairly paid to share creative recipes, publish photos of your creations and teach the rest of the world how they, too, can make the fluffiest pancakes ever. Independent creators everywhere will finally be able to flourish.”

All of that sounds nice in theory. But Yep is just launching.

DuckDuckGo, which launched in 2008, gets as many searches per year (~15.7 billion) as Google gets in about two or three days. Even Microsoft Bing – which is owned by Microsoft, the third-largest company on the planet by market cap – has failed to make a significant dent in Google’s search market share since 2009.

How Yep works

What really matters is search quality. That means Yep will have to satisfy the wants and needs of searchers. So how are they going about putting together those search results? 

Crawling

Yep collects website data using AhrefsBot. Ahrefs said it plans to replace AhrefsBot with YepBot in the “near future.”

AhrefsBot visits more than 8 billion webpages every 24 hours, which makes it the second most active crawler on the web, behind only Google, Ahrefs said.

For 12 years, AhrefsBot has been crawling the web. They had just been using the AhrefsBot data to power its link database and SEO insights, 

Indexing

The Yep search index is updated every 15 to 30 minutes. Daily, the company adds 30 million webpages and drops 20 million.

Other technical details

Ahrefs said its Singapore data center is powered by around 1,000 servers that store and process 100 petabytes of web data (webpages, links between them, and the search index). Each server uses at least 2x 100GB connections. Some servers use multiple GPU cards to train big transformer models. Before the end of the year, Ahrefs plans to open a U.S.-based data center.

Ahrefs ultimate goal?

In 2019, Gerasymenko said the goal of its then-hypothetical search engine was to attract the attention of a larger company (e.g., Microsoft) that could afford to bring the idea to scale.

“Considering the platform only generates a fraction of the company’s $120 billion revenue, the organization could easily revamp Bing under a profit-share model. It’s my prediction that the positive public sentiment alone would have greater ROI than existing ad revenue. If we succeed in our endeavors, Google will finally get some long overdue competition for search.”

Ahrefs CEO Dmytro Gerasymenko, “Investor money vs. public interest: did Google fail to build a non-evil platform?“

Yep search results

Yep’s search result pages (SERPs) are minimal. It’s not quite at the level of the old days of 10 blue links, but it’s not far from it.

Your options are web or news results.

There are also “knowledge” boxes on the right side of some SERPs, featuring content pulled from Wikipedia, about your search.

Here’s an example search for [apple wwdc]:

You’ll notice the Apple Events page gets six sitelinks. Many of the other results also have additional links under the search snippet.

And the news results for [apple wwdc]? Well, it seems something went wrong:

Yep also gives you the option to try your same search other search engines – Google, Bing, Mojeek and DuckDuckGo.

Of note: the first organic result for all four other search engines is Apple’s official WWDC page, unlike Yep. That’s a fail. And Yep’s results are much staler than all the competitors it points to, aside from Mojeek’s (which are pretty atrocious).

For comparison, here’s what those look like:

The [Apple WWDC] results for Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo are all much fresher, featuring links to news stories published within the past few minutes or hours, published by CNN, CNBC, MacRumors, TechCrunch and others.

Bottom line: Yep’s stripped-down version of search results aren’t a dealbreaker. And if you don’t care about fresh results, perhaps these results are passable – especially where this is a broad search term. But clearly, Yep has some work ahead of it before it will be a serious alternative and convince searchers to use it over Google.

More to come

I’ve reached out to Ahrefs to answer several more questions about their search engine. I will update as those answers come in. 

The post Ahrefs reveals its new search engine: Yep appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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1 million URLs: How to pivot your SEO strategy when you reach enterprise level

Written on June 6, 2022 at 12:11 pm, by admin

“We don’t have enough content on the website. We need to publish 100 pages per month.”

That is typically what I hear from the C-suite and across departments when they hire an SEO director for the first time at an enterprise company. 

Content has long been considered the holy grail of SEO – continually sought after but difficult to grasp intent, relevance and trust. 

More content published doesn’t mean better rankings. Martin Splitt and Lily Ray debunked this myth advising not to produce content for the sake of producing content. 

So, when you get to the one million URLs, does your view on content frequency change? How do you maintain organic traffic increases without more content? And without an increase in organic traffic, how does more revenue come in from organic?

The truth is when it comes to enterprise SEO, if your work doesn’t improve the bottom line, then your SEO strategy needs a gut check. 

Your enterprise company now recognizes that SEO drives revenue. Seize the shift. 

There is a clear paradigm shift from small business SEO to enterprise SEO. It can often feel like an unwelcome sense of deja vu. The reality is when you get to millions of webpages; your SEO strategy needs to adapt. 

Also, the relationship between technical, content and backlinks is entering a new era. Page experience is here to stay.

Over the past few years, enterprise SEO professionals have been forced to tailor their strategies to focus more on content topical relevance and authority and improve Core Web Vitals. 

Luckily, if your enterprise company hired a director of SEO, they understand the importance of SEO for revenue. SEO is integrally connected to sales. 

Now is the time to create a new enterprise SEO strategy that balances short and long-term results. Think of this as an opportunity to be on equal footing as your marketing counterparts. 

As your mindset shifts from small business SEO to enterprise SEO, think about the entire funnel – from top to bottom – to create a holistic approach to SEO to support the different areas of business within your company. 

Segment your technical SEO audit by categories or business function

The transition from SEO to enterprise SEO can be a bit scary from a technical perspective. One small change can have a major impact on your revenue. 

This is what happened with Ryanair.

On the flip side, one small change to your page speed can have massive improvements across your entire website. 

EBay targeted its category pages for image optimizations and eventually trickled this down to all website pages. For every 100 milliseconds improvement in search page loading time, eBay saw a 0.5% increase in “Add to Cart” count.

Enterprise SEO professionals need to get away from top-level and understand the inner workings of a company’s org structure. 

As an enterprise SEO professional, your job is to respect and prioritize your technical SEO audits and roadmap based on categories or themes on the website or business function. 

When you begin to segment your technical SEO by your company’s org structure, you’re opening the door for a collaborative discussion across multiple departments.

For example, I’m working on an audit for a company that sells printers, sewing machines, scanners, label makers, etc.

The business has structured its org chart by business unit (BU). There is one department that supports printers. If I presented a technical SEO audit to the printer’s team about sewing machines, that would be a complete waste of time for those BU leaders. 

By sectioning your technical SEO based on BU, you can prioritize what’s most important to each. 

Audit content by type and department

When it comes to auditing and strategizing on your enterprise SEO content, you want to rinse and repeat how you segment your technical SEO. Stick to the auditing based on content type and company org chart. 

Remember, your value is created by a more holistic approach to content that drives last-mile decisions as opposed to a siloed approach. Utilize key stakeholders across teams to better understand pain points and see how you can help solve a problem with content. 

Then, you want to focus on the right content fueling the engine for each department.

Ola King said it beautifully.

Once you’ve identified the top-performing content, start establishing templates and documentation to replicate the process on a larger scale.

By supporting other department initiatives with your content, you create a true partnership that drives meaningful, high-value organic traffic. 

Leave the link building to digital PR and content distribution teams

Link building is dead. There I said it. 

Now before you start to troll me on Twitter, let me explain. 

Link building is dead at enterprise companies. 

Why? 

There are already multiple departments managing the link building work internally. 

The goal of enterprise SEO with link building should be more about collaboration across your org structure. 

I’m not alone in this ideation. See what Nick Wildson, CEO and founder of Torque Partnership, says. 

Think about it.

Your PR department is already doing link building by increasing brand reputation and guest posts for your CEO (or other department head). 

Under the PR department, you may have an Influencer or Ambassador Manager generating sponsored content and user-generated content. 

Your social media team is already repurposing your content into social media, even repurposing to the C-suite social channels. And the social team manages your YouTube or Google Profile. If you’re lucky, the social team also owns Reddit, Quora and Wikipedia. 

You want to create documentation and guidelines to support these department initiatives. You don’t have to own their strategies, but you can contribute to them with an SEO eye to establish guardrails. 

With that said, there are certain SEO link-building tactics like broken link building that should continue to be on your radar quarterly for quick wins. 

A solid enterprise SEO foundation is the key to scaling to one million organic landing pages

I noticed enterprise SEO professionals often ignore or don’t take the time to invest in foundational SEO. Even if it’s not sexy, foundational SEO will get you over the finish line.

Today, enterprise SEO leaders have an opportunity to connect the customer journey to the full-growth business plan. Your goals should be focused on scaling content and website performance in a more meaningful way for the customer.  

By building connective tissue across other departments, your enterprise SEO strategy will begin to get engrained into the culture and transform your company to be more competitive and unlock new levels of content creation, giving you center stage in the C-suite.

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Google Chrome’s Topics API test going public July 1

Written on June 4, 2022 at 6:01 am, by admin

“A small percentage of traffic” will soon see the initial testing of Google Chrome Topics API go live on July 1. The new feature will enable users to enable interest-based advertising without having to track the site a user visits. 

Interest-based advertising. According to recent developer documentation, “IBA can help advertisers to reach potential customers and help fund websites that cannot otherwise easily monetize visits to their site purely via contextual advertising. IBA can also supplement contextual information for the current page to help find an appropriate advertisement for the visitor.”

The Topics API. The Topics API has three main tasks:

• Maps website hosts to topics of interest. For example, a yoga website would be categorized under “Fitness”
• Calculate the main topics for a user based on their browsing history
• Provide a JavaScript API to help select appropriate ads based on the user’s interest

Review the official developer’s documentation. You can find the entire developer’s documentation on the new Topics API test here.

What Google is saying. Google states that this initial test is to validate that their systems are operating as designed, and no revenue or performance impact is expected. But advertisers who prefer not to be included in the initial test can opt out using Chrome’s Permissions-policy header. 

Why we care. When Google announced the API trial in January, advertisers were less than enthused. Marketers from various agencies raised concerns around the 350 topics outlined not being sufficient enough to provide relevant targeting. Less topics means more competition around less targeted ads, which is a problem for everyone involved. Google may already be aware of the issue, but unless they have significantly improved this list in advance of the test, we may not see a change advertisers opinion or projected outcome. There is no word on how long the trial will go on.

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Yandex CEO and founder resigns following sanctions

Written on June 4, 2022 at 6:01 am, by admin

Arkady Volozh, Yandex’s CEO and executive director, resigned from his position, the company announced today.

The European Union imposed sanctions on Volozh personally. Yandex has not been sanctioned by the EU, U.S., or UK. Volozh had a 45.3% voting and 8.6% economic interest in Yandex.

Why we care. Yandex is generally regarded as Russia’s Google, even though Yandex pre-dates Google (Yandex launched in 1997). Yandex’s share of the Russian search market is estimated to be at 48%, behind Google’s 49%, according to StatCounter – but Yandex says it owns 61% of the search market. So this development, as well as others below, mean it’s worth keeping an eye on the state of the company if you work on any sites that rely on Yandex organic traffic.

What Volozh said. “While I consider this decision to be misguided and ultimately counterproductive, I do not intend to give any instructions to my family trust as long as sanctions are in place. During this time the trust will vote in line with the recommendations of the Board. While I will continue to support the team wherever possible, this decision is in the best interests of the company and its stakeholders.”

Go deeper. On March 22, Wired published Is Russia’s Largest Tech Company Too Big to Fail? The article details how everything Volzh helped build over 20 years began crumbling in 20 days.

Timeline of Yandex turmoil. Here are some significant Yandex stories since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24:

• Feb. 28: Nasdaq suspended trading of Yandex shares. (Nasdaq)
• March 3: “We believe that our current data center capacity and other technology critical to operations will allow us to continue to operate in the ordinary course for at least the next 12 to 18 months. In the event of any prolonged suspension of supplies of hardware, software or other technology used in our business or offerings, if we are unable to secure alternative sources, our operations could be materially adversely affected over time.” (Yandex)
• March 7: Esther Dyson and Ilya Strebulaev resigned from Yandex’s board of directors (Yandex).
• March 15: Yandex Deputy CEO and Executive Director Tigran Khudaverdyan, who had been sanctioned earlier in the week, resigned. (Yandex)
• March 16: Yandex rumored to be in negotiations to sell its media division (news and Zen). (TechCrunch)
• April 27: Yandex’s Q1 financials were released. Yandex reported an adjusted net loss of 8.1 billion roubles ($110 million). The company said it experienced continued stable operations and strong growth across most of its businesses until Feb. 23. (Reuters)
• April 28: Yandex announced the sale of news and Zen to VK. (Yandex)
• May 18: It was reported that Yandex was exploring selling search and mail and moving its headquarters to Israel. (Data Center Dynamics) 

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Google introduces three new travel products for hotels

Written on June 4, 2022 at 6:01 am, by admin

Hotels looking to book new travelers and capitalize on this summer’s travel frenzy will soon discover a much easier way to manage and change their rates.

What’s new. Earlier this week Google announced three new features to actively open the onboarding process for hotels wanting to list their rates or provide booking links through Google. 

Update 1: Industry-standard protocols. Google will support industry-standard protocols for bringing hotel rates online. These protocols are created to help different hotels remain consistent with booking, uploading new rates and making changes. 

Update 2: No more spreadsheets. Hotels will no longer be required to upload complicated spreadsheets and files to add rates to their Google Business Profile. Instead, Google is simplifying this process by allowing to directly input their rates into their profiles. This change should make it easier for hotels to keep up with demand and change rates quickly, without getting technology providers or partners involved. 

Update 3: Open access to Hotel Ads. Soon, hotels will no longer need a Hotel Center account to run campaigns. This means that any Google advertiser can search for and run campaigns for any hotel’s website. When asked whether they would phase out Hotel Center accounts altogether, Google stated “We will not be phasing out Hotel Center accounts. Current hotel advertisers with existing Hotel Center accounts will continue to operate and serve ads as usual.”

Launch date. Google is actively supporting industry protocols and allowing hotels to input their rates into Google My Business. However, there is no word yet on when the Hotel Center account requirement will be lifted. 

What Google is saying. In regards to the reason for the changes, a Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land: “We’re streamlining this process to help more advertisers utilize hotel ads, and activate them more quickly. This is part of our overall efforts to help more hotel businesses get online.”

Travel on the rise. Google indicates that searches for passport appointments increased 300% over the first four months of 2022.

Earlier this week Snapchat also announced the introduction of Dynamic Ads for Travel. The new feature allows brands such as Booking.com to create catalogs and serve to audiences based on travel intent. The focus on travel-related products should give us an early indication of where the industry is headed.

The good and the bad. Adding rates to a hotel’s Google Business Profile allows them to appear in search, maps, and YouTube. Those free booking links will also direct users to book on a hotels actual website – not a third party. Which means more revenue for the hotel and less for sites such as Booking.com or Hotels.com. Hotels are also not allowed to add multiple rates for different room types, minimum stay restrictions, or discounts for multi-night stays. 

Official announcement. Read the complete announcement and current setup documents here.

Why we care. Travel is bouncing back and consumers want an easy streamlined process for booking hotels directly, as well as real-time room prices. These updates should help advertisers and hotels managing the listings stay ahead of the competition by being able to change rates directly on their Google Business Profiles.

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Google Ads shares three automation best practices

Written on June 4, 2022 at 6:01 am, by admin

Google has released a Search Ads Automation Guide that shares some best practices on how to use automation to reach customers. The guide is long overdue for some marketers who have an unfavorable opinion about automation in general. According to a recent Search Engine Land article, adoption of automation and recommendations is overwhelmingly positive, while satisfaction is low, with over half of users reporting a negative experience.

This new guide attempts to answer users questions and concerns around automation and ease the anxieties most advertisers have around letting go of control of their keywords and bids.

Best practice 1: use a broad match keyword strategy. Historically advertisers that used broad match keywords found wasted ad spend and irrelevant clicks. It seems like there haven’t been any new features or updates around broad match. But Googles is attempting to help users better understand why they should use them, and with what bid strategy they feel will have the biggest impact for their account. Google states “Broad match keywords work best with Smart Bidding because it ensures you only bid on searches that are expected to perform for you.” 

Best practice 2: using smart bidding strategies. Google says that evolutions in automation and machine learning will allow us to simplify how we setup and manage campaigns. The guide goes into great detail on why a smart bidding structure is best to use with broad keywords. But veteran advertisers know that making too many account changes at once, especially moving toward a hands-off automatic approach, can be detrimental for performance. Testing smart bidding strategies are a great idea in general, but be cautious of spend, conversion changes, and general advice around this topic from your Google rep.

Best practice 3: use responsive search ads. Google advises to “use multiple headlines and descriptions to automatically build and serve relevant ads for every query based on auction-time signals.” This is one strategy we can get behind. Responsive search ads allow a level of automation, but within the parameters you define. You maintain control of your ads by creating multiple headlines and descriptions, and allowing Google to show the most relevant combination to your audience

The guide. All info is taken from Googles guide “Unlock the Power of Search: Inside Search Automation with Google Ads.” The guide is long at 28 pages and likely makes for great bedtime reading. The guide features a promising but generic case study from Tails.com (a pet food company for which Nestlé Purina Pet Care is their biggest investor), but provides no insight into their (what was likely a large) budget and ad spend, which is information most businesses would be interested in knowing.

Read the guide. The full PDF can be downloaded here.

Why we care. Google’s efforts at getting their users to understand automation is likely an attempt to get more people to not only adopt the best practices they define, but to leave those campaigns running long enough to see results. For many advertisers, this is simply not possible. If you have a large budget, go ahead and test these strategies and best practices. But as far as letting your campaigns run on autopilot, or firing your agency, we’re not there yet.

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New Twitter ‘Search Subscribe’ feature coming soon?

Written on June 3, 2022 at 2:59 am, by admin

You may soon have a new way to get push notifications from Twitter whenever someone’s tweets match a search query that you specify. 

The Twitter feature is called “Search Subscribe.”

Twitter has not confirmed if or when the feature will roll out to users. It was first spotted by Dylan Rousse, an Android developer, in the latest pre-release version of Twitter’s mobile app.

How it works. When you do a search in the Twitter app, you will see a bell icon next to the search bar. Tapping that bell will bring up a message: “You’re subscribed to receive push notifications for Tweets about [insert your search query here]”.

Similar to TweetDeck. TweetDeck, which is also owned by Twitter, gives you an option to add a column. “Search” is a column type. So if you put in the search term “SEO” you would see every tweet that matches “SEO” in that column. Or, you can filter those results by location, authors and engagement levels. 

Push notifications. Twitter lets you enable or disable a variety of notifications. This includes mentions, replies, retweets, new followers, direct messages and more. To date, search has never been one of these options. 

For Twitter Blue? We previously reported that an edit button is coming to Twitter. But if and when that does finally launch, it will be part of the paid Twitter Blue service. Early speculation is that Search Subscribe would be part of Twitter Blue.

Why we care. If Search Subscribe works similarly to TweetDeck, this could be helpful for monitoring any keywords that are of interest to you. However, it could also become incredibly noisy so you’ll want to choose your search terms wisely.

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