Google has made several changes to its search and advertising platforms. It has split site-wide issues from per page issues in Google Webmaster Tools. It also released over 40 search quality improvements, including increased local results and changes to link evaluation. Bing recommends a single URL strategy for desktop and mobile sites. Google may be implementing an over-optimization penalty for excessive optimization techniques. The Google Display Network is getting its own AdWords tab for improved display campaign management. Social media reports have been added to Google Analytics to measure social media performance and ROI. The Yahoo and MSN search alliance will transition all Yahoo paid search accounts to Microsoft AdCenter in Q2.
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Google Webmaster Tools Updates
Site wide issues now split out from per page issues.
Google used to report on DNS resolution failures, connectivity issues with your web server, and
problems fetching your robots.txt file by URL. However these have been split so that webmasters
can keep track of the failure rates for each type of site-wide error.
If there aren‟t any errors then these will be summarised with some friendly check marks to let
webmasters know everything is OK with their website (see below).
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Search Quality Updates
Google released a blog post with over 40 search improvements which are being picked over by
SEO‟s around the globe:
http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/02/search-quality-highlights-40-changes.html
Increased local results in searches - searches for generic terms that often have local meaning
Refreshed per-URL country information. [Launch codename “longdew”, project codename
“country-id data refresh”] We updated the country associations for URLs to use more recent data.
“Site:” query update [launch codename “Semicolon”, project codename “Dice”] This change
improves the ranking for queries using the “site:” operator by increasing the diversity of results.
Link evaluation. Google have changed the way in which they evaluate links and are turning off a
method of link analysis that they have used for several years. The impact of this change has been
downplayed by Google engineer John Mu
International launch of shopping rich snippets. Shopping rich snippets [project codename “rich
snippets”] have been used by Google to highlight product prices, availability, ratings and review
counts.
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Google‟s Venice Update & Local Optimisation
Google released a notification regarding over 40 search improvements in February this year.
There were several size-able updates within the release, one of which being Google‟s Venice
update which will have a large impact on how local search results are displayed in Google‟s
results.
Searches for generic terms that often have local relevancy such as “flower delivery” or “eye test”
are now seeing more local listings appearing in the place of more traditional landing pages and
separately from the Google Places result.
Google also state that this has also been linked with increased recognition of which URLs belong
to which country.
“This now means that any 'bricks and mortar' businesses will need to make sure that they have
well optimised and useful landing pages for all their local stores, in addition to the their normal
Google Places pages.”
Teddie Cowell
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Google‟s Venice Update & Local Optimisation
Shown Above - A search query for the keyphrase “eye test” with the location set to Oxford, UK.
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Google‟s Venice Update & Local Optimisation
Shown Above - A search query for the same keyphrase “eye test” with the location set to Manchester, UK.
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Bing Recommend single URL policy
Bing have recommended the "one URL per content item" strategy which is becoming a popular
standard for website development
“At Bing, we want to keep things simple by proposing the "one URL per content item" strategy. For
each website, instead of having different URLs per platform (one URL for desktop, another for
mobile devices, etc.), our feedback is that producing fewer variations of URLs will benefit you by
avoiding sub-optimal and underperforming results. It can help manage unwanted bandwidth usage
as well. Optimise meta data and copy on store pages for local queries” Duane Forrester , Bing
http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/webmaster/archive/2012/03/07/building-websites-
optimized-for-all-platforms-desktop-mobile-etc.aspx
Google‟s stance remains less clear with individual Googlers recommending the single URL
approach yet the main guideliness still focus on mobile redirection
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Google Over Optimisation Penalty?
On a recent panel at SXSW, Matt Cutts (head of Spam at Google) stated:
“We are trying to level the playing field a bit. All those people doing, for lack of a better word, over
optimization or overly SEO – versus those making great content and great site. We are trying to
make GoogleBot smarter, make our relevance better, and we are also looking for those who
abuse it, like too many keywords on a page, or exchange way too many links or go well beyond
what you normally expect. We have several engineers on my team working on this right now.”
However the concept itself is nothing new as Google have been making modifications to their
algorithm regarding 'over optimisation' for some time now (think keyword stuffing, aggressive
footer links, too many backlinks with similar anchor text etc).
Google have yet to announce any official statement or documentation about the update however it
is sure to create a great deal of speculation over the implementation of traditional SEO
techniques. Google have relied on a culture of fear in the past to control SEO activity so it could
be a case of Google's bark being worse than it's bite.
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Google Over Optimisation – Guava Verdict
“As with most of Google's algorithm changes, we won't know the real world impact until the update
is actually live. In 2009, Matt did a video on over optimization penalties saying there was no such
thing so it will be interesting to whether this actually comes in the form of an actual penalty or
whether Googlebot will focus less on signals that are easy to game (h1, page title, internal links
etc).”
Gary Moyle, SEO Manager
“It won‟t affect you as long as you continue to ensure you create a useful 'well optimised' website
with good content, this is something Matt says in the article he wants to reward. Also there are two
points to what Matt described:
1) How Google can help websites that are not very well setup still be competitive.
2) 2) Penalising websites that 'over optimise‟. The examples 'over optimising' given being:
keyword stuffing, bulk link exchanges etc. So this is business as usual but with the dial
turned up a bit.”
Teddie Cowell, SEO Director
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Google "Search Plus Your World" To Launch
Beyond US
"Google has announced that by default, it will begin encrypting search beyond Google.com
in the coming weeks. Since the reason Google uses secure search is primarily to enable its
“Search Plus Your World” personalized results, this means SPYW is likely to expand
beyond the US. It also means that search marketers can expect the percentage of “not
provided” data they see to greatly increase."
http://searchengineland.com/googles-search-plus-your-world-to-launch-beyond-us-113840
Google has announced this roll out internationally however it seems likely that the rollout
will be targeted towards English speaking countries first such as google.co.uk (Google UK)
with eventually roll out to most common languages.
We are already seeing large spikes in “not provided” data for UK clients occurring around
5th March and this figure looks set to go beyond the 10% figure for many clients despite
Google claims that the percentage of “not provided” data should remain under 10%.
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The Google Display Network gets its own
AdWords Tab
Google has decided that it‟s display network is
long overdue a separation from the way
traditional search campaigns are managed in the
AdWords interface, and as a result has awarded
the Display Network its own tab!
This will enable us to bid, target and optimise
display campaigns all from a single place.
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The Google Display Network gets its own
AdWords Tab - Continued
Since effective contextual targeting is pivotal to the successful running of display campaigns, Google has
enhanced its contextual targeting to, in Google‟s words, „combine the reach of display with the precision of
search, using Next-Gen Keyword Contextual Targeting‟.
In short, being able to tweak and adjust your contextual campaigns down to individual keyword level. This
level of transparency gives us the ability to now optimise display campaigns to aggressively target those
particular keywords which are proving to perform well, as well as making it „easier for you to extend
search campaigns to display and more efficient to run the two types of campaigns together‟ (Google).
As part of this update, Google are also introducing a way to
visualise the reach of your display campaigns, and access how
that reach is influenced by combining multiple targeting
types, such as keywords, placements, topics or interests.
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New Ad Status Insight for AdWords
Google has released a new function in AdWords
which complements existing ad diagnosis tools, to
identify reasons why your PPC ads currently might
not be showing.
The updated Status column, accessible from the
Ads tab, will provide more detailed insight into any
issues with ad approval or policy limitations for
individual ads.
To access the new functionality, simply hover over
the speech bubble – consequently a window
containing whether the ad is showing for that
particular keyword in a particular location and the
reason why it may not be showing is displayed.
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New Ad Status Insight for AdWords - Continued
You also have the option to re-diagnose
the ad with a different keyword or target
location by clicking „edit‟ next to the
relevant field. For target location you
can either enter specific coordinates, or
more usefully search by place name.
Guava Verdict
“This is a nice little feature for quickly obtaining insight into your ad‟s eligibility within the
AdWords interface. It‟s particularly useful for advertisers whose products might potentially
infringe on some of Google‟s advertising policies, for example resellers of trademarked goods. In
these instances ads often have „approved (limited)‟ status or may even be disapproved, so
quickly accessible information on the reasons why enhances the ability to make quick
amendments or exception requests. For those advertisers selling „restricted‟ products or
services, the target location diagnostic is extremely helpful, as some restricted areas of business
as deemed by Google might only have limitations in specific countries.”
Melanie Wood, PPC Account Manager
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Google „Near-Phrase/Near-Exact‟ Match Type Beta
Google has been trialling a new match type, „near phrase, near exact‟, which has been in limited beta
since November last year and is due to complete at the end of March. This is designed to broaden exact
and phrase match keywords with syntactic variants including plurals, misspellings, abbreviations and
acronyms, but does not include synonyms.
Google has stated that the benefits of this match type are that it assists the advertiser in driving
supplementary traffic with minimal effort, carefully broadens the coverage of existing exact and phrase
match keywords and eliminates the need to build out extensive keyword lists covering all possible
variations of a keyword.
Guava Verdict
“The introduction of near phrase, near exact further demonstrates Google‟s focus on driving
more volume (and therefore spend) for advertisers, and will no doubt make certain, perhaps
even relatively untouched or undiscovered SERPs, more saturated. Many (smaller) advertisers
use phrase and exact matches to both ensure and maximise qualified traffic for limited
spend, particularly in competitive verticals, so may be reluctant to diverge from these. In fact, this
may better benefit the current broad match advertiser where volume can be refined without killing
traffic levels altogether, but as always it will be interesting to see the results when fully launched.”
Sam Vandermark, Senior PPC Executive
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New Google Analytics Social Media Reports
Google has recently introduced Social Media Reports in Google Analytics intended to enable advertisers
to more accurately assess the value of their social media activities, in particular which channels are
driving engagement and are proving effective both on their website and across the web. Google says
that „the new reports bridge the gap between social media and the business metrics you care about -
allowing you to better measure the full value of the social channel for your business‟.
The reports include an overview of social performance and its impact on conversions, visibility on which
conversion goals are being impacted by social media and which of your content is being most shared
across the web to name a few.
For more detailed insight, Social Media & Analytics Manager at Guava, Mark Edmondson, has written an
article on how these reports can now expose the true value of social media.
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Search Alliance happening in Q2
If you weren‟t already aware,Yahoo! and MSN have officially announced that the Search Alliance is
taking place at the end of April, long overdue from their initial announcement. This means that all Yahoo!
paid search accounts will be transitioned to and subsequently managed through Microsoft adCenter. In
terms of management, only needing to optimise from one platform is more effective, but we will not have
visibility on segmented search volume by engine.
All Guava clients will be informed of the exact changeover date and our PPC teams are continuing to
manage and optimise both accounts until the transition is complete, to ensure clients keep receiving
valuable traffic from both accounts.
