On Google.com is a special Google logo for Gerda Taro. She died at the young age of 26, just a week or so before her 27th birthday, while capturing images on the front line of the Spanish Civil War in July 1937. She is known as the "the little red fox" for being the first female to photograph on the front lines of a war.

She died on July 26, 1937 from her wounds while capturing the Republican army retreat at the Battle of Brunete.

She was born on August 1, 1910 in Stuttgart, Germany and had to flee the country when Hitler and the Nazi party took control. She was born into a middle-class Jewish Galician family and thus didn't really see eye-to-eye with the Nazi party. In 1933, she was arrested and detained for distributing anti-Nazi propaganda.

Google wrote:

Though she was tiny in stature, Gerda Taro had the heart of a giant. Known as “the little red fox,” the ginger-haired photographer fearlessly turned her camera lens to capture sensitive and critical images of conflict around the world, producing powerful black-and-white images that informed readers of the newspaper Ce Soir. In fact, Taro is considered to be the first female journalist in the world to cover the front lines of conflict.

Here’s to Gerda Taro, who had a photographer’s eye, a journalist’s soul, and a warrior’s courage.

She moved to France in moved to Paris in 1934. In her short 26 years, she really left a legacy for her name. You can read about her on Wikipedia.

Forum discussion at Twitter.

Google previewed three new features coming to search results dedicated to Q&A, FAQ, and how-to content.

These upcoming features were announced by Google’s Gary Illyes at Google Dance Singapore.

An SEO names Akhil Agarwal alerted us about the announcement on Twitter.

#GoogleDanceSingapore New Search Features coming in @methode @rustybrick @sejournal pic.twitter.com/6dZbIQ4HiS

— Akhil Agarwal (@akhil1594) July 26, 2018

From what I can tell by looking at the photo, Google will be highlighting Q&A, FAQ, and how-to content with customized rich results.

According to the example, the rich results will appear at the top of the page, similar to how featured snippets are displayed.

These result types look like they will take up most of the screen. Given that each result type contains drop-down menus, they could very well end up being expanded across multiple screens.

The biggest unanswered question is – will Google render these rich results on its own? Or will Google rely on structured data markup implemented by the site owner?

Google recently introduced a new type of structured data for marking up tables, so it’s conceivable that Google may be planning to introduce more types of markup in the near future.

Another question is – how will this affect publishers?

The more content that’s displayed in search results, the less of a need there is for people to click-through to the actual web page.

With that in mind, if these result types are dependent on structured data, would it even be worth implementing?

If these result types are automatically generated, will publishers be able to opt out?

Those are all questions that need answering when these rich results officially go live in Google search results.

Google has introduced a new type of schema markup for displaying data tables directly in search results.

This markup is intended to be utilized in news articles by data journalists. Although it can be used on any dataset, regardless of the publisher.

Some examples of what qualifies as a dataset, according to Google, are:

• A table or a CSV file with some data
• An organized collection of tables
• A file in a proprietary format that contains data
• A collection of files that together constitute some meaningful dataset
• A structured object with data in some other format that you might want to load into a special tool for processing
• Images capturing data
• Files relating to machine learning, such as trained parameters or neural network structure definitions
• Anything that looks like a dataset to you

Google aims to make data easier to discover, as well as make it clear to searchers that an article or document contains a potentially useful dataset.

It’s not easy for Google to detect and understand tables of data, so it’s up to site owners to communicate which information is most useful by utilizing the new dataset markup.

“It works like this: news organizations that publish data in the form of tables can add additional structured data to make the dataset parts of the page easier to identify for use in relevant Search features.”

Google says it has already begun working with 30 of the top data journalists in the world in an effort to implement this structured data markup.

One of the participants is ProPublica, who claims that adding the markup “trivial” compared to its potential usefulness.

For more information about how to implement dataset structured markup, see Google’s developer documentation.

Bing has introduced JSON-LD support as part of Bing Webmaster Tools.

Users can now validate their JSON-LD implementation by logging into Bing Webmaster Tools and using the Markup Validator tool, which can be found in the Diagnostics and Tools section.

Following the inclusions of JSON-LD, Bing’s Markup Validator now supports six markup languages:

• Schema
• HTML microdata
• Microformats
• Open Graph
• RDFa
• JSON-LD

From the official announcement:

“Bing works hard to understand the content of a page and one of the clues that Bing uses is structured data. JSON-LD, or JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data, is an extension of JSON-based data format that can be used to implement structured data on your site so Bing and other search engines can better understand the content on your site.”

Bing emphasizes the benefits of using JSON-LD, explaining how it can be implemented without modifying the HTML content of pages.

JSON-LD can also be hidden in the header, body, or footer of a page.

“This effectively means that webmasters can go about designing their pages as they like without having to worry about arranging the information for markup implementations. JSON-LD makes defining links and relationships between data and entities between the data present on your pages easy because it supports nested data.”

The versatility of JSON-LD is exactly why webmasters should be proactive with respect to ensuring the markup is valid.

Lastly, Bing reminds site owners that putting spam data in JSON-LD markup can affect a page’s presence in search results.

JSON-LD markup may not be visible on a page, but it is still visible to search engines.

Search ad spending growth decelerated across the engines in Q2 2018, digital agency Merkle reported in its Q2 2018 Digital Marketing Report.

After two strong quarters, the slower growth for Bing and Yahoo in Q2 came from lower CPCs for both Bing Product Ads and text ads. Google search spend growth slowed for the third straight quarter, driven by lower click volume. Google search ad spending grew 18 percent, while Bing and Yahoo search ads spending increased by 11 percent year over year.

Mobile devices (phones and tablets) generated 60 percent of total search ad clicks. Apple’s iOS devices and desktop Safari browser drove 47 percent of Google search ad clicks in Q2.

Google CPCs increasing faster than click volume

Overall, Google ad spend increased by 18 percent year over year, which represents the third straight quarter of slowing growth. CPCs rose 10 percent, outpacing 7 percent growth in clicks. Factors attributing to higher CPCs include higher brand click costs; a higher share of clicks coming from the top two ad positions, which tend to have higher CPCs than those in lower positions; and falling share of clicks from Google Search Partners, which also have lower CPCs.

Source: Merkle

Phone spending increased by 37 percent. Desktop spending growth slowed to 12 percent, a seven-quarter low.

Merkle says that despite CPCs rising faster than ad click volume — and non-brand text ad minimum bids rising by roughly 20 percent over last year — revenue per click has increased across key segments, due in part to audience targeting capabilities. The agency says 37 percent of Google search ad clicks were impacted by specific audience targeting, including retargeting lists for search ads RLSA, customer match and similar audiences.

Source: Merkle

Google Shopping continues to grow at a faster pace than text ads. Ad spend on Shopping increased by 31 percent compared to 6 percent on text ads. With the context that Merkle’s clients skew large retailer, Shopping ads accounted for 59 percent of the clients’ Google search ad clicks in Q2.

Showcase Shopping ads drove 4.4 percent of phone clicks among participating retail advertisers, up from 1.6 percent in Q4 2017.

Bing Ads & Yahoo Gemini CPC drop

Merkle continues to report on these platforms together, as Bing still delivers ads on a share of Yahoo search inventory. A sharp drop in CPC growth from 17 percent in Q1 2018 to negative 10 percent in Q2 2018 trended across device types. Brand CPCs, which spiked by more than 40 percent a year ago, grew by just 9 percent year over year in Q2.

Source: Merkle

Bing Shopping campaigns saw mobile drive click volume growth to 143 percent year over year, yet Shopping spend growth slowed from 64 percent to 40 percent as a result of falling CPCs. Shopping CPCs dropped by 43 percent year over year. Bing Product Ads accounted for 33 percent of Bing paid search clicks.

Amazon ads out-converting Google Shopping by a wide margin

It’s worth mentioning some of the Amazon advertising stats Merkle includes in the report. While traditional search ad spend growth slowed, Amazon Sponsored Products spend grew by 165 percent year over year, and Amazon Headline Search Ads grew 162 percent among Merkle clients. Clicks from both Amazon ad products converted roughly 3.5 times better than Google Shopping ads. Amazon Sponsored Products and Headline Search Ads link to product pages within Amazon.

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

Other Great Search Forum Threads:

• Ad Grants launches a Certified Professionals Community, The Google Advertiser Community
• 500% increase between June and July - Google AdSense, WebmasterWorld
• “This week, HSBC, a financial institution with around 3,900 offices in 67 cou..., Google+ - Google
• “Today, the European Commission issued a competition decision against Android..., Google+ - Google
• Introducing https://t.co/tSG0wjCLp0 Check out and bookmark this link to stay updated with latest news and announcements from Google Ads ;)!… https://t.co/dAn5VOb1pW, Google Ads on Twitter
• We'll get this fixed.…, Danny Sullivan on Twitter

Search Engine Land Stories:

Other Great Search Stories:

Analytics

Industry & Business

Links & Promotion Building

Local & Maps

Mobile & Voice

SEO

PPC

Other Search

Bing Ads has rolled out two new advanced bidding strategies, one of which is the most user-requested feature so far this year.

Target CPA

Target CPA, the feature that users have been clamouring for, optimizes campaigns to generate conversions at a cost-per-acquisition set by the advertiser.

Since the CPA is set at the campaign level, advertisers do not have to manage bids for individual keywords or ad groups.

A maximum CPC can also be set by the advertiser

Maximize Conversions

This feature aims to do exactly what it says — create as many conversions as possible without exceeding a campaign’s budget.

Similar to Target CPA, advertisers set a maximum CPC, but bids for individual keywords and ad groups do not need to be set.

Advertisers can get around the inability to manually bid on ad groups and keywords by selecting the “manual bid” strategy type.

Requirements

Certain requirements must be met by the advertiser in order to use these features.

• Campaigns must have a minimum of 15 conversions in the last 30 days.
• Universal Event Tracking must be implemented on the advertisers’ websites.
• Campaigns must be targeting USA, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, or the UK.

Advantages Over Other Search Ads

Bing emphasizes that these new bidding strategies leverage a unique combination of signals that are only available from Bing Ads offerings.

“Like each of our bidding strategies, these new additions will leverage unique signals that are only available in our bidding offering to drive real-time dynamic bidding adjustments. Signals can include a user’s web browser, operating system, search query, and ad copy. We also perform real-time bidding adjustments based on the time of day or day of week, a user’s location, and their device type to better achieve your bidding goal.”

These new bidding strategies are rolling out throughout the week. Bing recommends testing them on a few campaigns at first and allowing at least 2-3 weeks for its system to learn and achieve bidding goals.

Google has announced support for datasets markup schema in the Google search results. This makes it possible for searchers to better visualize data represented on a web page directly in Google’s search results.

Google explained that “news organizations that publish data in the form of tables can add additional structured data to make the dataset parts of the page easier to identify for use in relevant Search features.” Google added, “News organizations add the structured data to their existing HTML of a page, which means that news organizations can still control how their tables are presented to readers.”

Here is what it looks like, with the markup version on the right:

Google’s developer site explains this is a “pilot” release of this markup. Google wrote:

Datasets are easier to find when you provide supporting information such as their name, description, creator and distribution formats are provided as structured data. Google’s approach to dataset discovery makes use of schema.org and other metadata standards that can be added to pages that describe datasets. The purpose of this markup is to improve discovery of datasets from fields such as life sciences, social sciences, machine learning, civic and government data, and more.

Around two years ago, Google first announced this as Science datasets in search. Google is now calling them simply “Dataset” and expanding it beyond the science community to any data-driven agency.

Here are some examples of what can qualify as a dataset:

• A table or a CSV file with some data.
• An organized collection of tables.
• A file in a proprietary format that contains data.
• A collection of files that together constitute some meaningful dataset.
• A structured object with data in some other format that you might want to
  load into a special tool for processing.
• Images capturing data.
• Files relating to machine learning, such as trained parameters or neural network structure definitions.
• Anything that looks like a dataset to you.