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What Shape Is Your Data In? New strategies to keep contact data fresh and accurate http://ift.tt/2nzSY6I Ask any marketer what shape their customer data is in and chances are good you’ll hear: “poor.” In this webinar, we’ll learn how to fix that, and how to build a solid foundation with your customer dataset. If you think network data means gathering business cards at lunch, you’re in for a surprise. Today’s successful marketers rely on networked data, from data owners sharing contact-level information. The result? Everyone has access to better data than any one brand could assemble on its own. Join data experts David M. Raab and John Hurley as they describe how Radius and its clients built a network of B2B business and contact information, and how you can create a new data source with unprecedented freshness, accuracy, and coverage. Register today for “What Shape Is Your Customer Data In? New strategies to keep contact data fresh and accurate,” produced by Digital Marketing Depot and sponsored by Radius. About The Author
Digital Marketing Depot
is a resource center for digital marketing strategies and tactics. We feature hosted white papers and E-Books, original research, and webcasts on digital marketing topics -- from advertising to analytics, SEO and PPC campaign management tools to social media management software, e-commerce to e-mail marketing, and much more about internet marketing. Digital Marketing Depot is a division of Third Door Media, publisher of Search Engine Land and Marketing Land, and producer of the conference series Search Marketing Expo and MarTech. Visit us at http://ift.tt/XKa9gM. SEO via Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing http://ift.tt/fN1KYC March 30, 2017 at 05:42AM
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Google Maps ad traffic steadily growing http://ift.tt/2nnIEh8 Over the last couple of years, Google updates have shown the company’s growing focus on monetizing searches with local intent and navigational queries. From local inventory ads, which are a version of Product Listings Ads that feature information on when a product can be picked up at a local brick-and-mortar store, to ads featured in the Local Pack, it’s clear that Google sees local searches as fertile ground for more ad interactions. This strategy has extended to Google Maps, where ads derived from location extensions now populate for searches. These ads are steadily growing in importance, as shown by a rise in the share of traffic attributed to the “Get location details” click type. ‘Get location details’ clicks on the riseWhile there’s no clean way to view all impressions and clicks from Google Maps, Google confirmed that very nearly all traffic attributed to the “Get location details” click type can be attributed to ads featured on Maps. Taking a look at the share of brand traffic for a sample of brick-and-mortar Merkle advertisers, we find that ads on Maps are steadily becoming a larger share of overall traffic. On phones in particular, brick-and-mortar brands saw a surge in “Get location details” traffic in Q1 and now see about 5 percent of brand traffic coming from this click type. The disproportionate share on phones makes sense given the on-the-go nature of mobile device usage. This click type is also growing as a share of non-brand text ad click share, but it tops out at around 1 percent for phones and tablets. It does seem logical that more users might type in the name of a specific store they’d like to visit in a Google Maps search than a non-brand query. However, non-brand traffic likely carries much more incremental value for advertisers, as brand searches within Google Maps would very likely return a brand’s local business locations organically without an ad present. Interestingly, tablet click share is actually higher than on phones for non-brand, and I’m unsure what might be causing this. Maybe users are just more likely to use non-brand searches in Google Maps on tablets than on phones. Either way, it’s clear that the volume of ad traffic coming from ads on Google Maps is steadily increasing across all device and query types. Since only Google knows how extensive its rollout has been to date in terms of query coverage and the number of ad units shown, it’s pretty tough to say how much larger these shares might grow in the future. However, there are a few things to look out for moving forward. Online conversion rate will likely sufferAds on Google Maps are classified as coming from google.com, despite the fact that users searching in Google Maps are obviously more likely looking for directions than are searchers on Google’s primary domain. As such, Google Maps searchers are less likely to convert online than google.com searchers, since they’re more likely to be looking for physical stores. The data bears this out, with online conversion rate for “Get location details” significantly lower than overall conversion rate for brand keywords for the median advertiser. Click and conversion volume for this click type is so low for non-brand that it’s not as easy to do a clean conversion rate comparison, but most brands also find non-brand conversion rate is significantly lower for “Get location details” clicks than overall non-brand clicks. At this point, the traffic share is so low that there isn’t much of an impact to most programs’ bidding based solely on online return on ad spend. However, as these ads become a bigger part of total traffic, that impact will become larger. Thus, brick-and-mortar brands will need to be even more diligent about tracking orders that occur in store that are tied to paid search clicks and include this value in calculating appropriate bids. CPC may go upSince Google Maps traffic is categorized as part of Google search traffic rather than the search partner network, brands can’t exclude ads from showing on Google Maps if there are active location extensions, as all search campaigns must target Google search. There’s also no way to adjust the price paid for Google Maps traffic relative to other Google search traffic. This is slightly concerning, mainly because “Get location details” clicks are more expensive on mobile devices than overall CPC for brand text ad for the median advertiser. Interestingly, desktop CPC for “Get location details” is actually lower than overall CPC. However, on phones, which have the highest click share coming from “Get location details,” CPC is 30 percent higher. Tablet CPC is way higher, which is another weird tablet data point that’s hard to explain. It’s not totally clear why these clicks are more expensive, but there is something of a parallel in the cost of search partner brand keyword clicks. While search partner non-brand clicks are cheaper for most advertisers than google.com traffic, the reverse is true for brand keywords. Since there are no bidding controls for either Search Partner or Google Maps ads, there’s no way to combat these higher costs, and brands that want this traffic simply have to eat the costs or turn off traffic entirely. Just like conversion rate, these CPC differences aren’t really impacting campaigns that much with such a small click share right now. But looking forward, that could change if Google’s able to ramp this traffic up. ConclusionAs the default navigational app on Android, as well as a popular source of in-browser navigational directions, Google Maps has a lot of users and traffic. Google is in the process of expanding its monetization of that traffic, defaulting advertisers with active location extensions for brick-and-mortar stores into showing Google Maps ads with little targeting control. This is part of Google’s recent larger focus on driving ad traffic from searches with local intent, with new formats like local inventory ads and ads in the Local Pack similarly targeted at drawing clicks from users looking for nearby brick-and-mortar options. Some of these ad units provide real incremental value to advertisers by getting local business information in front of interested searchers. Others, like Google Maps ads for brand keyword searches, seem redundant and less likely to drive incremental value for brands. Looking forward, most brands would like at least some ability to adjust the price paid, as well as the option to opt out of showing ads based on location extensions in Google Maps. For brands with multiple local stores, it’d also be nice to control which location a user is shown, since there might be other considerations besides proximity which warrant promoting a specific location. Hopefully, Google will provide such controls if these ad units continue to grow in terms of traffic share. For now, brands with physical locations should try to take advantage of in-store conversion and visit tracking, available through Google and other third parties, if possible, in order to tie these conversions to online clicks. This will help in calculating the value driven by ads, whether those on Google Maps or elsewhere across the Google search network. Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here. About The AuthorAndy Taylor is a Senior Research Analyst at Merkle, responsible for analyzing trends across the digital marketing spectrum for best practices and industry commentary. A primary contributor to the Merkle Blog, Dossier, and quarterly Digital Marketing Report, he speaks frequently at industry conferences and events. Prior to digital marketing, Andy worked as an event organizer for a political campaign and dabbled in freelance writing. A graduate of the University of Virginia with a degree in Economics, he likes to spend his free time watching documentaries and selling homemade ice cream sandwiches at farmer's markets with his wife. SEO via Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing http://ift.tt/fN1KYC March 30, 2017 at 05:15AM
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Baidu becomes Google’s biggest ally in mobile page speed http://ift.tt/2odk1XZ The breaking news came on March 7, 2017, that Baidu is now supporting Google’s mobile framework, AMP. The tech leader of Baidu MIP, Gao Lei, gave a speech at Google’s first AMP conference in New York. He confirmed that Baidu is working hand-in-hand with Google to accelerate the faster web globally. Baidu MIP, which stands for Mobile Instant Pages, is Baidu’s own version of Google’s AMP. The technologies of MIP are very similar to AMP. In fact, coding an MIP page is just like coding an AMP page, except MIP pages are more customized and optimized for the browsers in the market of mainland China. Baidu says that a Mobile Instant Page can reduce the rendering of above-the-fold content by 30 percent to 80 percent. Moreover, the tap-to-open rate will increase by 5 percent to 40 percent. And similar to Google, Baidu has been considering potentially giving the MIP pages a ranking advantage in search results. The two search engine giants are collaborating for the first time to tackle the problems of slow pages and unfriendly user experiences on mobile devices. Lei says that they are trying to avoid websites investing redundant resources to adopt both AMP and MIP. This implies that the future of AMP and MIP may look even more identical; that said, a one-for-all global mobile framework could be in the making. Baidu certainly is not going to abort its MIP project and replace it with Google’s AMP, as there have been over 1 billion MIP pages indexed by Baidu already. We have yet to confirm with Baidu exactly what they have aligned with Google, and how. They say that there are still technical issues to solve. However, Baidu has confirmed that users can eventually open an AMP page from a Baidu SERP. We don’t know how they plan to do this, whether by opening the AMP pages directly from the SERP or translating them into MIP pages. At Merkle China, we’ve already seen Google and Baidu taking the first steps. Prior to the announcement, the AMP Project website could not be loaded successfully in mainland China. I could only dial on a VPN to check the reference on www.ampproject.org. However, all ampproject.org links are now accessible. When we check the CDN, we see Google enabled the CDN for China, and it loads extremely fast! Given that most AMP traffic originates from Google organic SERPs, it wouldn’t have make sense for AMP documentation to be available in mainland China prior to the announcement. But now developers within the Great Firewall will be able to view and implement this documentation in preparation for Baidu’s support of this framework. This collaboration will certainly benefit mobile internet users, who will be able to enjoy hyper speed on their devices. Of course, it will also benefit brands that want to build a larger presence in mainland China. It is unclear whether users out of the Great Firewall can open an MIP page from a Google SERP; that will depend on whether Google decides to provide support MIP in its search results or accept the customized MIP pages as AMP pages. To be continued… ! Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here. About The AuthorHermes Ma is a digital marketer and writer. He owns Merkle's search business in Greater China. Hermes has an experience in search marketing and web analytics of over a decade, both in and out of the Chinternet. He writes his blog at maxket.com(Chinese) and he also guest-blogs at Baidu Webmaster Tools. Hermes is a hardcore gamer. He ranked at Top 1,000 of PlayStation Asia. If you don't see him playing games after work, he's probably spending time with his lovely son. SEO via Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing http://ift.tt/fN1KYC March 30, 2017 at 04:43AM
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How to decide ‘Should I bid?’ http://ift.tt/2oCPD5M One age-old question that often comes up when I chat with new prospects or new clients is, “Should I bid on my brand terms or generic terms where I rank in the top three organically?” This question is hardly trivial. It matters a great deal because PPC search budgets are generally constrained — and now, with other enticing options available from Facebook and other programmatic channels, we need to demonstrate that our search advertising budgets are being allocated optimally. Six key questions to ask before you beginThe best way to answer this question is by using a multi-stage process of evaluation, followed by experimentation. Let’s start by evaluating brand keywords. Before you start your evaluation or experiment, you need to answer six important questions:
Three key concepts to understandNow it’s time to introduce a few economic concepts that directly apply to the “Should I bid?” problem. One is “opportunity cost” — the cost/loss of not doing something. The second is the idea of marginal net profit. That’s about understanding the relative profit of all the search and paid media you are engaged in. (Another way of thinking about marginal net profit is by asking yourself this: if you were to invest another $100 in a particular channel within search, keywords, social, display and so on, which investment would deliver the highest return?) Finally, there’s the concept of “an inelastic auction.” Inelastic auctions are said to exist when obtaining more volume results in dramatically escalated costs as you battle others for top positions. That’s it for the economic concepts (whew!). But there’s another factor that applies here: the concept of cannibalization — the primary driver of the “Should I bid?” problem. Cannibalization, in the context of PPC, refers to situations in which marketers’ paid and organic listings compete with each other for search clicks. When this happens, marketers often attempt to pare back PPC spend, reasoning that “they typed in my brand and want to visit my site, so we’ll get them anyway, eventually.” Your own “cannibalization index” can be determined by evaluating your answers to questions 1–6 above. Okay, you’ve got the concepts. Let’s move on to solving the question. (Note: the methods below aren’t perfect, but chances are that using them can move you closer to a solution.) Five steps to a solutionStep 1: Calculate CTR (click-through rte) on Organic. Search Console can be used to determine this. Step 2: Turn on or off paid search nationwide/globally, and then compare organic CTR pre- and post-test. Step 3: Calculate total cumulative CTR when the paid and organic listings coexist in the SERP. (Cumulative CTR lets us understand the incrementality on total clicks and CTR of paid.) Step 4: Compare conversion rate on paid vs. organic, including taking PPC and organic sitelinks into account. (Often marketers use different landing pages for their paid primary and sitelink visitors, and those tuned landing pages out-convert the organic pages. If this isn’t true in your case, then your calculations are made easier.) Step 5: Take the drop in organic clicks as a result of your paid listings getting the clicks, subtract that number from the paid click count, and re-calculate the ROI of the paid advertising, based purely on the incremental clicks that the paid campaign delivered. (You may need to use a “fudge factor” if conversion rates on the organic listings were lower.) Can I really do this?“But wait,” you protest, “I can’t just turn off brand keywords during a test. My boss will kill me if sales drop! Besides, where else am I going to put that budget? Most of the other keywords are already close to minimum acceptable ROI, and I can’t use the brand dollars to bid those up!” OK, fair point. In many cases, it still makes sense to bid on branded keywords, even after taking cannibalization into account. If you don’t want to send too many ripples through your current campaigns at one time, limit the scope of your experiment, for example, by testing results in five mid-sized cities. (You’ll have to use location bid modifiers/adjustments to do this. See If you choose to run your test in specific geographies instead of nationally or globally, you’ll have the added advantage of conversion data that isn’t subject to seasonality or other factors that might show up in a purely longitudinal test (test over time with one time period being the control group). Internal company politics also play a role. You may want to add a fudge factor to your calculations based on a Marketing Mix model calculation, or if you are still building a brand and want to be recognized as a market leader. If you’re like most marketers who run this test, you likely will find that bidding on your brand keywords still makes sense from an ROI, net search profit and budget allocation analysis. Others, however, may find that paring back spend — or increasing it — increases net search profit (profit after deducting all costs). For high organic positions, the answers are more dependent on landing page variations and head or tail terms. One thing is for sure: if your boss is questioning brand spend or spend on high-ranking organic keywords, run a test like the one above. You’ll gain the confidence that you’re doing the right thing or, at the very least, are on the right track. Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here. About The AuthorKevin Lee is Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Didit, a leading digital marketing and technology firm. With 21 years of digital marketing experience, 4 books, 500+ speaking engagements, and 780+ published columns, Kevin Lee, is a true Digital Marketing pioneer. Kevin gives back to the industry regularly and was a founding SEMPO Board Member, its first elected Chairman and longest serving original board member. Kevin is also an inventor of several platforms and technologies. Kevin’s recent inventions include a nonprofit ad exchange for PSAs, GivingForward.com and Sweeps4aCause.com conversion catalysts for email and social activation as well as brand lift. He also is launching a new hyper-local SEO platform under Didit. SEO via Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing http://ift.tt/fN1KYC March 30, 2017 at 03:17AM
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This is not a test: Google Optimize now free — for everyone http://ift.tt/2olpwkJ
Businesses often have one big question for us: How can they better understand their website visitors and deliver more relevant, engaging experiences?
To help businesses test and take action, last spring we launched our enterprise-class A/B testing and personalization product, Google Optimize 360. We saw great demand, so we made it more accessible with a free beta version last fall — and that response also exceeded our expectations, with over 250,000 users requesting an Optimize account. Today we're very excited to announce that both Optimize and Optimize 360 are now out of beta. And Optimize is now immediately available to everyone — for free. This is not a test: You can start using it today.
Easy to implement
A recent survey showed 45% of small and medium businesses don’t optimize their websites through A/B testing.1 The two most common reasons given were a "lack of employee resources" and "lack of knowledge to get started." If you're part of that 45%, Optimize is a great choice for you. Optimize has many of the same features as Optimize 360. It's just right for small and medium-sized businesses who need powerful testing, but don't have the budget or team resources for an enterprise-level solution. Optimize is easy for anyone to set up. Early users of Optimize have been happy with how easy it is to use. In fact, it's built right on top of Analytics, so if you're already an Analytics user you'll add just a single line of code to get Optimize up and running. With just a few clicks more, you can start using your Analytics data to design experiments and improve the online experience for your users. Easy to use Worried about having to hire someone to run A/B tests on your site, or frustrated about not knowing how to do it yourself? Don't be. The Optimize visual editor allows for WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) editing so you can change just about anything on your site with a drag and a drop. And more advanced users will enjoy the ability to edit raw HTML or add JavaScript or CSS rules directly in the editor. Powerful targeting capabilities within Optimize allow you to serve the right experiences to just the right set of users. And you have flexible URL targeting capabilities to create simple or complex rules for the pages where you want your experiment to run. To find out if a targeting rule you've set will apply to a specific URL on your site, use the new Optimize URL tester. Just enter a URL and the tester will immediately tell you if that page is a match for your targeting rule. Easy to understand Optimize calculates results based on your existing Analytics metrics and objectives using advanced Bayesian methods, so the reporting shows you exactly what you need to know to make better and faster decisions. We’ve also upgraded the improvement overview (see image above) to help you quickly see how an experiment affects the metrics you care about most, whether that means purchases, pageviews, session lengths, or whatever else you’re tracking in Analytics. Easy to try Leading businesses are building a culture of growth that embraces the use of data and testing to improve the customer experience every day. We’re delighted to offer Optimize to everyone to help deliver better user experiences across the board. As of today, Optimize is available in over 180 countries. (A special note for our European users: We’ve added a new data processing amendment to the Google Optimize Terms of Service that you may review in the UI and accept if you wish.) And we're not done yet: Keep an eye out for more improvements and announcements in the future. What are you waiting for? Try it right now! Happy Optimizing! 1Google Surveys, "Website Optimization Challenges for SMBs," Base: 506 Small/Medium Business Owners and Managers, Google Surveys Audience Panel, U.S., March 2017 Posted by Rotimi Iziduh and Jon Mesh, Product Managers, Google Optimize SEO via Google Analytics Blog http://ift.tt/1Yd8Id0 March 30, 2017 at 03:05AM 7 Ways You Screw Up Your Email Marketing by @reshurathi http://ift.tt/2nD6mZ4 No matter what kind of business you’re in, email marketing is one of the most effective marketing channels to increase your sales and revenue. According to Email Expert, for every $1 spent on email marketing, the average return on investment is $44.25. People who buy products marketed through email spend 138% more than people who do not receive email offers. Chances are, you’re already aware of it and hopefully using this channel to increase your sales, revenue, and build a relationship with your customers. But if you are not getting a similar ROI from this channel then the chances are high that you’re screwing up your email marketing by making some of the below-mentioned mistakes: 1. You Don’t Spend Much Time in Writing Subject LinesYou might think that a beautifully designed and well-crafted email along with a good offer is enough to get results. But you could increase your open rates by as much as 203% by improving your subject lines. If you find it difficult to craft great subject lines, here are a few tips:
Given below is an example from Matchesfashion.com Subject lines can make or break your email campaigns. If you want to improve your subject lines, then this post on 8 battle-tested ways to increase email open rates will benefit you. Tip: Keep A/B testing your subject lines. The results will never be constant. The things that might have worked for you three months ago may not work anymore. 2. You Don’t Segment Your Email List EffectivelyBack in the good old days, email blasts served as the primary vehicle for email marketing. That ship has sailed. Now you need to tailor your messages according to your prospects’ interests and preferences if you want them to open and click your email messages. That said, sending meaningful messages to your email marketing list is not possible without deep segmentation. But there are very few marketers who dive deep into segmentation. They segment their email list once and forget about it. 42% of marketers do not send targeted email messages; only 4% use layered targeting. (MarketingProfs) So if you want to make your emails more meaningful then segment your email list on an ongoing basis. Given below is an example to show you how to do that: 3. You’re Not Offering ValueLet’s face it — even a plain designed email can convert well if it conveys value to your customers. The design is important, but it’s the value proposition that induces the reader to take action. Let’s take a look at this email from the online jewelry store BlueNile. Subject Line: I received this email on February 13th. It’s clean, simple, and spot on. It clearly highlights the value along with the offer to induce action. 4. Your Campaign Goals Are Not DefinedSetting a goal for your marketing campaigns is obvious, but what we found out after going through thousands of emails is they lack focus on one particular goal and CTA. Many email campaigns have multiple CTAs which confuse readers and prevent them from clicking and hence converting. Remember, “the more, the merrier” doesn’t always holds true. In fact, a single hyper-focused call to action makes it easier for subscribers to convert and can increase clicks by 371% and increase sales by an impressive 1617%. 5. Your Emails Are Too LongLonger emails have less engagement and click rates. So why do marketers send long emails? A vast majority of people check their emails on small screens. Many retailers have been sending emails that are too long. The longer the email, the less readable it is. Avoid creating longer emails. No matter how amazing they look, subscribers prefer emails that are short, simple, and targeted. Your emails should also:
6. You’re Sending Emails at the Wrong TimeIf you aren’t careful about your send timings then you certainly aren’t getting the best possible conversions from your email. The Grommet A/B tested its email send time to find out if sending emails in the morning instead of noon can make a difference. The results revealed that sending at 10 a.m. instead of noon resulted in a 14% lift in revenue per email. 7. You Focus More on Selling than Engaging ThemEmail marketers often focus on what they can get from email campaigns: sales, referral traffic, reviews etc. But they rarely focus on providing value to the subscribers. Focusing on your goals is fine, but if your subscribers feel that all of your emails are just trying to sell to them, they will leave your email list. “People don’t like to be sold, but they love to buy.” Don’t just use email messages to promote your products and services. Use them to keep your subscribers entertained and engaged. Educate them, pique their curiosity and they’ll keep checking your emails. But that doesn’t mean you have to create separate mailers to entertain your readers. You can add pun and provide tons of information in your marketing mailers too. So that your readers will feel entertained after reading it no matter whether it’s a promotional, cart recovery, or order confirmation message. Remember; as long as your mailers are providing value, your email marketing will eventually pay off. With these tips at your disposal, it’s now time to audit your email marketing plan and look for the mistakes you can improve on. Image Credits Screenshots by Reshu Rathi SEO via Search Engine Journal http://ift.tt/1QNKwvh March 30, 2017 at 01:26AM
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SearchCap: Fred report, Bing Ads budgets & Google rich cards http://ift.tt/2nhJfjE Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. The post SearchCap: Fred report, Bing Ads budgets & Google rich cards appeared first on Search Engine Land. Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article. SEO via Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing http://ift.tt/fN1KYC March 29, 2017 at 08:00AM
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Google says it has now tracked 4 billion store visits from ads http://ift.tt/2oz4WMO Google has been ramping its efforts to tie clicks on ads to store traffic. On Wednesday, the search giant said it has now captured over four million store visits after users have clicked on an ad, up from one billion a little less than a year ago, and is set to rapidly expand that number. In September, Google extended the now two-year old store visits measurement program to ads on the Display Network and said it had statistically significant visibility into visits to 200 million stores globally. The company says it is now positioned to make store visits data available to thousands more advertisers due to advancements in several components of the measurement process. Google measures store visits based on aggregated and anonymized data from users who opt into Location History tracking on their phones, Google surveys and mapping technology. (For more background on how Google captures store visits data, see Under The Hood: How Google AdWords Measures Store Visits and Google’s Surojit Chatterjee: Here’s Why You Should Trust AdWords Estimated Store Visits.) The company says that in the past month, it has shifted to using deep learning models that can train on larger data sets to increase accuracy in prioritizing location signals. “This allows us to reliably measure more store visits in contexts that are typically tricky, such as in multi-story malls and dense geographies where many business locations are situated close to each other,” Kishore Kanakamedala, director of product management for online-to-offline solutions, wrote in Wednesday’s blog post. Recent mapping improvements include a refresh of Google Earth and Google Street View images to get up-to-date views of where buildings begin and end, as well as a global effort to scan WiFi strength in more buildings to determine business boundaries. Google surveys some users to verify the locations they’ve visited and then reconciles that feedback against its predictions to continue training the models. In addition, Google says it now has teams that conduct in-person audits and site visits, particularly in high store density areas, to provide more data. In November, Google added store visits data to distance and location reports in AdWords to provide more detail on how far users were from a store location when they clicked on an ad and what areas drive the highest volume of store visits, down to the postal code. About The AuthorAs Third Door Media's paid media reporter, Ginny Marvin writes about paid online marketing topics including paid search, paid social, display and retargeting for Search Engine Land and Marketing Land. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, Ginny has held both in-house and agency management positions. She provides search marketing and demand generation advice for ecommerce companies and can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin. SEO via Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing http://ift.tt/fN1KYC March 29, 2017 at 05:44AM
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Fred’s losers: Sistrix analysis says ad-heavy, thin-content sites hit worst http://ift.tt/2mPW8Ww Sistrix, an SEO toolset data collection company, published their analysis of the Google Fred update after reviewing “nearly 300 domains.” Their analysis describes the sites and pages that were hit like this:
They have confirmed our analysis of Fred, where we said low value content sites were hit by this update. Juan Gonzalez from Sistrix analyzed 300 website domains on Google Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States, all of which lost Google search results visibility after March 13, 2017. Juan said that “nearly all losers were very advertisement heavy, especially banner ads, many of which were AdSense campaigns … Another thing that we often noticed was that those sites offered little or poor quality content, which had no value for the reader.” He then shared specific examples of sites that were hit and how bad their visibility dropped. Many of the sites lost between 50 percent and 90 percent visibility in Google, which correlates with what we’ve seen webmasters report their Google traffic has dropped after being hit by this Fred update. This chart shows the ranking distribution on Google for freewarefiles.com before the Fred update: This chart shows the ranking distribution on Google for freewarefiles.com after the Fred update: Here is a visibility report from Sistrix show a 75 percent drop for freewarefiles.com in Google.com: Google has confirmed there was a new update but would not add anything outside of the fact that what it targeted can be found in the Google webmaster guidelines. SEO via Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing http://ift.tt/fN1KYC March 29, 2017 at 03:40AM Bing Ads will automatically migrate monthly budgets to daily in April http://ift.tt/2nv3I6k If you’re still using monthly budgets for your Bing Ads campaigns, now is the time to switch over to daily budgets. Starting in April, campaigns set with monthly budgets will be migrated automatically to “Daily accelerated” budget delivery if you don’t take action ahead of time. Bing will calculate the daily budget by dividing the monthly budget by 30.4 or the minimum allowable daily budget. And if you have any Automated Rules that incorporate monthly budgets, you’ll need to create new rules based on daily budgets. Any Automated Rules associated with monthly budgets will not be migrated. Shared budgets are already based on daily delivery, so this change does not impact any campaigns that do share budgets. About The AuthorAs Third Door Media's paid media reporter, Ginny Marvin writes about paid online marketing topics including paid search, paid social, display and retargeting for Search Engine Land and Marketing Land. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, Ginny has held both in-house and agency management positions. She provides search marketing and demand generation advice for ecommerce companies and can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin. SEO via Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing http://ift.tt/fN1KYC March 29, 2017 at 02:34AM |
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