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Google News
Google, which has long
trumpeted its philosophy of doing no evil when it comes to advertising,
surprised many with its confirmation that it is testing huge banner ads for
branded queries. In 2005, Google promised banner ads would never come to the
web. Right now, the ads only apply for about 30 advertisers.
Researchers at USC
have found that Google has dramatically increased the number of servers
servicing its queries around the world, from under 200 to more than 1,400. This
is significant not only in the complexity and expense of the technical work
performed, but also the timeline in which it was done – only 10 months.
Google has introduced
a self-service tool for businesses to create graphical promotions that will
display to (mostly mobile) customers based on their location and search terms.
The program, called Google Offers, can also reach potential customers by
displaying these ads within Google Maps. The Offers program is designed to
target high-intent shoppers, and help direct them to a local business for an
immediate transaction.
Google is not updating
PageRank (the button in the Google Toolbar that displays a numeric score,
showing how highly ranked your website is) any more this year, leading to
speculation that it is on the way out.
The only Google
algorithm change for October appears to be a small update to Penguin (2.1)
released on October 4th. None of your websites appear to have
experienced any negative effects from it.
In statements this
month, Google engineer Matt Cutts made clear that larger websites do not
automatically rank better with Google because of their largeness. According to
Cutts, larger websites will “naturally get more traffic because each of those
individual pages can also rank for their own set of search queries, increasing
the overall opportunity for sites to gain visitors. Again, just having the
number of pages doesn't give you a boost though. It might give you a few more
opportunities, but normally the only reason you get that opportunity is because
we see more links to your website so we are willing to crawl a little bit
deeper and find more pages to index.” Read into that what you will.
Debate within the SEO
community on the impacts to Google’s August Hummingbird update continue, with general
agreement that Hummingbird:
· affected broad search terms far more than long
tailed search terms
· signals a shift from keywords to topics,
driven by Google’s understanding of what your website is actually about
(Knowledge Graph)
· coincided in timing with “keyword not
provided” to signal that keywords alone are no longer enough
· represents a broader shift towards semantic
connections and synonyms in driving ranking
A good resource for
reading up on impacts is included below.
Google rolled out
major revisions to the Mobile experience for Google Shopping this month. Many
of you participate in the Google Shopping program, so this change is meaningful
– mobile users represent 24% of your visitors, on average. These changes affect
the way Mobile ads look through Shopping, and also show nearby merchants as
well as their stock availability. These are tied into a business’ Google+ page,
and integrate with hours, directions and reviews. The management of Shopping
campaigns has also been revised this month, allowing you to segment (and bid)
your feed data by category.
Google released new
Terms of Service, which are set to go into effect on November 11. Among
the changes - shared endorsements - which means unless a person opts out,
Google can use their photo, reviews and recommendations in merchant
advertisements. Advertisers can elect to use Shared Endorsements in their
campaigns, or not. Being able to show customers a friend from within their
personal network endorsing a business could be a very powerful tool for
advertisers.
Read Part 1 of the SimplePart October Update.
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