Web Search & Marketing Newsletter – November 2017

Welcome to the latest issue of our monthly newsletter which focuses on news, tips and advice for effective website marketing, with particular attention on Google and best practice search engine marketing techniques, plus current trends in the market.

In our first article this month we take a look at Google’s recent changes to the AdWords daily budget settings and how the spend can now be up to twice the average daily budget, without exceeding the calculated total budget for the month.

We also look at how Google is aiming to create better user experiences by reducing delays in website landing page load speeds from clicks on AdWords ads with URL tracking, by rolling out parallel tracking later this year. This feature should be of interest to AdWords managers and businesses who use third-party providers, as necessary changes to tracking platforms could take several months to complete.

In the final article this month we examine Google’s Project Beacon For local search marketing, which harnesses the technology of mobile search to help support local businesses in attracting potential customers to their location.

You can read more below, or you can also browse through previous editions of the newsletter by month. You can also follow us on Twitter for the latest developments during the month, or follow our Facebook page or Google+ page for updates.

On to this month’s edition…

Google’s Changes to AdWords Daily Budgets

The AdWords daily budget is calculated by Google over a month-long billing cycle, based on 30.4 days. Due to the daily fluctuations in traffic and online searches Google has changed the way that the budget can be spent, starting from last month. Campaigns can now spend up to twice the average daily budget to help try and reach advertising goals, such as a target amount of clicks and conversions.

This so called ‘overdelivery’ will be balanced out by Google over that 30.4 day calculation period. It states that it won’t charge more than the calculated monthly spending limit, but if it does then it’ll credit the extra amount. To elaborate further on that process, 30.4 is the average number of days in a month (365 days in a year / 12 months = 30.417) so Google multiplies an advetiser’s daily budget by this number so it knows what the budget should be over the course of a month.

For example, if the daily budget is set at £5, over the course of the month the daily charges will vary. Some days the charge would be £2, on others £10. But at the end of the month, the charges wouldn’t exceed £152 (which is 30.4 multiplied by the £5 budget). So even though campaign costs rose above and fell below the £5 budget from day to day, at the end of the month the charge should still be no more than the calculated monthly budget.

If Google does deliver over the monthly budget it’s possible to check if overdelivery credits have been processed, by following these steps:

1. Sign in to the (new version) AdWords account.
2. Click the reporting icon in the upper right corner of your account.
3. Select Predefined, then Basic from the drop-down menu.
4. Click Overdelivery.
5. To calculate overdelivery, subtract ‘Billed cost’ from ‘Served cost’.

This change by Google should help businesses that tend to have large fluctuations in traffic during various periods during a month by ensuring that the quota of clicks for the available monthly budget will be reached and there will be the maximum amount of traffic going to the site.

If you want to know more about how this ‘overdelivery’ could benefit your business, contact us now for more details.

Quicker Landing Page Loading With Parallel Tracking

It will soon be posible to get visitors to a landing page from AdWords faster with parallel tracking. As technology enables more assistive experiences, consumer expectations for seamless web experiences are now higher than ever before. In fact, a one second delay in mobile page load can decrease conversions up to 20%.

When someone clicks an AdWords advert with URL tracking, this can cause a delay that prevents them from reaching a website for hundreds of milliseconds. While this may not sound like much, this lost time can impact campaign performance and so to avoid these delays – and create better user experiences – Google announced last month that it will begin to roll out parallel tracking later this year.

With parallel tracking, users will head immediately to the landing page after clicking an ad while the browser processes URL tracking requests in the background. Google has seen this change help users on slower networks reach landing pages up to several seconds faster. When more visitors can reach and engage with a site more quickly, this can help reduce wasted ad spend and increase conversions for a business.

Parallel tracking will finish rolling out to all AdWords accounts in early 2018, so it’s important that the next steps are taken asap. If a third-party provider is used for tracking, it’s necessary to contact them as soon as possible to make sure clicks will continue to be measured with parallel tracking. Providers will need to make changes to their platform that could take several months to complete, so it’s important to get started early. Google is also working closely with key providers to help make the transition as easy as possible for all advertisers.

You can learn about how to prepare for parallel tracking here, or if you want more information about how it could impact your business, contact us now.

Project Beacon For Local Search Marketing

Google has been offering a pilot program to some companies over the past few months, called Project Beacon. It’s a way of harnessing the technology of mobile search and to help support local businesses in attracting potential customers to their location.

Project Beacon is a new test program whereby Google will send ‘beacons’ to businesses with a physical location to make their site more visible to customers with mobile devices. These beacons are small transmitters that send one-way signals that are read by customers’ phones. This location information can then be used across a wide range of services on mobile phones.

Beacons help mobile devices determine a user’s location more accurately. As a result, when a user’s smartphone has a better understanding of their location, participating companies can unlock a wide range of new features, and set up their business to use location-related features across Google, such as:

• Help their business show up on personal maps or saved places, where users have opted in to Location History.
• Gather photos, reviews, and other user-generated content for their business from people who’ve actually visited the location.
• Provide features like popular times and typical visit duration to help customers plan their visit to the business.
• Help provide Location Insights about how customers engage with the store.

The features available to a business will depend on the number of users that visit the location, as well as visit durations, size of venue, and other factors. The data shown in Google’s products is based on anonymous, aggregated visit statistics so that it’s not possible to tie a particular visit back to an individual and Google follows industry best practices to ensure the privacy of individual users.

At present the Project Beacon pilot is available to selected businesses in the US and UK and there is no cost currently being charged. In order to take part in the trial, businesses must first receive (or request) a beacon from Google.

If you’d like to know more about this trial program and how it might help your local business marketing, please get in touch.

Welcome to the latest issue of our monthly newsletter which focuses on news, tips and advice for effective website marketing, with particular attention on Google and best practice search engine marketing techniques, plus current trends in the market.

This month we have a focus on AdWords, with a new development as well as tips on getting better results from Shopping campaigns. In our first article we look at the new call bid adjustments which are being rolled out to advertisers over the next few months to provide more control and focus for the better converting phone channels. In the second article this month we provide some advice and tips for Google Shopping campaigns, and ways to structure a product feed to get the best coverage of the market.

You can read more below, or you can also browse through previous editions of the newsletter by month. You can also follow us on Twitter for the latest developments during the month, or follow our Facebook page or Google+ page for updates.

On to this month’s edition…

Call Bid Adjustments in AdWords

Click-to-call ads have been available in AdWords for the past seven years as ad extensions, which enable searchers to call directly from the ads. Google is now rolling out a new function whereby advertisers can use bid adjustments to control how often the call function appears as part of an advert.

Many advertisers have found the click to call extension a powerful way of attracting enquiries from search. With mobile searches becoming increasing important and a bigger share of the market, these calls are vital and can convert three times better than web clicks.

The new call bid adjustments – which are being made available through the new AdWords ‘experience’ interface – allow advertisers to increase bids on campaigns that drive valuable phone calls. For example, if you’re a travel advertiser, you may see higher order values from calls because it can be easier to cross-sell rental cars, group tours and other vacation add-ons during a live conversation. By raising your call bid adjustments to show call extensions more frequently, this can drive more of the high-value call conversions.

There is already some good data being made available for the click to call option, with reports showing the time and length of calls that record a conversion (usually for calls or more than 1 minute), but with the new bid adjustment, this analysis and tracking will become more valuable to advertisers.

Google has provided best practice advice on the use of call extensions and how these can be used to maximise conversions, plus they have provided suggestions on ways to convert more calls to business.

If you’d like to know more about call extension and bidding in your AdWords account, please contact us now for more details.

Tips for Google Merchant Centre & Shopping Campaigns

At a recent Google presentation about using the Merchant Centre feeds and AdWords Shopping campaigns, a range of insights and tips were presented which aim to get better results for ecommerce stores from this increasingly important sector of AdWords.

One of Google’s current areas of focus is the use of automation and machine learning to help improve the management and results of AdWords campaigns, including Shopping. Here, the main objective should be to improve margins and ROAS (return on ad spend) so that as campaigns develop and data is collected, the bid targeting and ad performance should improve based on results.

The other main area that Google is pushing is website load speed, particularly for mobile sites. Research shows that most searchers will leave a mobile site after 5 seconds if it still hasn’t loaded, with a target time of less than 3 seconds to keep the user engaged and onsite. As we have noted before, Amazon and other big retailers obsess about these metrics as differences in milliseconds can have a notable impact on sales and revenue.

Google is continuing to enhance the interaction between product feeds from the Merchant Centre account and AdWords Shopping campaign performance. New opportunity suggestions for feeds will be appearing in AdWords soon, along with price benchmark reports.

With the product feed content, the use of good title and description for a product are important to help it rank better in the results. It’s recommended that brand names are included in the product title, plus gender and size information where relevant. By looking at the search terms report that has displayed products in the past, the common search phrases should be fed back into the product descriptions to match popular usage and increase the chances of products appearing on the search page.

As Shopping becomes a bigger part of AdWords inventory, and often the most effective part of an ecommerce account, the tools and metrics being made available are becoming more sophisticated and valuable, such as click impression share reports and price benchmarks for the same products. These things can all help an advertiser develop their product feed and campaign targeting to maximise sales and make an AdWords Shopping campaign a highly cost effective source of new online business.

If you’d like to know more about developments in Google Shopping campaigns and how these could work for your business, please contact us for more information.

Welcome to the latest issue of our regular monthly newsletter which features news, tips and advice on effective website marketing, with a particular focus on search engine marketing techniques and trends.

In our first article this month we take a look at Google’s recent introduction of a new Smart Bidding strategy called ‘Maximize Conversions’ and how that can help to make the most out of an AdWords budget. The second article looks at Google’s rollout of the new look AdWords ‘Experience’ and how the new design and set of tools makes AdWords significantly easier to use for advertisers.

In the final article this month we take a look at the release of ‘Posts’ for all Google My Business users. This provides another element to a company’s business listing, which allows the addition of more details including the highlighting of limited time promotions, events or new products.

You can read more below, or you can also browse through previous editions of the newsletter by month. You can also follow us on Twitter for the latest developments during the month, or follow our Facebook page or Google+ page for updates.

On to this month’s edition…

Google Introduces ‘Maximize Conversions’ with Smart Bidding

Google recently introduced a new AdWords Smart Bidding strategy called ‘Maximize Conversions’. The aim of this is to enable AdWords managers to get the most conversions from their marketing budget using an automated system.

It can be challenging to know exactly how to initially set the right bid and then adjust it to ensure that your advertising spend gets the most customers. That’s where Maximize Conversions comes in – it automatically sets the right bid for each auction to help to get the most conversions within the daily budget.

For example, for a clothing retailer who’s trying to quickly sell last season’s styles, Maximize Conversions helps to get the most sales from the existing budget by factoring signals like remarketing lists, time of day, browser and operating system into bids.

Smart Bidding uses Google’s machine learning technology to optimise for conversions across every ad auction (a.k.a “auction-time bidding”). Google cites the case of Trex, a luxury composite decking company that used Maximize Conversions to build brand awareness and saw a “73% increase in conversion volume”.

Google’s made it relatively easy to implement Maximize Conversions, which can then be tested by getting insights and by monitoring bid strategies to understand its performance.

This brand new bidding strategy has yet to be experienced and has the potential to improve the ROAS on AdWords campaigns, but often with automated bidding that uses Google’s machine learning, it can take a few weeks for that to learn enough to work effectively based on historical conversion data. So there can often be an initial period of ‘bid shock’, when the original max. CPC bids can change dramatically and become more costly. If that initial period can be endured however, the automated bidding can often work well over time.

If you want to know more about how Smart Bidding strategies have the potential to improve your AdWords campaigns, contact us now.

New AdWords ‘Experience’ Coming For All Advertisers

Every year Google organises a conference to announce new trends and developments in their products, with AdWords being a keenly awaited event that took place at the end of May this year. With mobile devices becoming ever more common in the way people use the web, Google revealed new tools to help advertisers reach this market and manage their campaigns more efficiently. Some of these are already rolling out, and others will be appearing in the coming months.

Most notable from these new developments is the new look AdWords ‘experience’ which is already available for most advertisers, with a new design and set of tools in the account to help these advertisers visualise and manage their campaigns more effectively. The redesign makes AdWords significantly easier to use, and is designed to help users identify and reach their own marketing goals and to get things done with minimal effort.

Included in this new AdWords experience is a new Overview page, which automatically presents the advertiser with relevant insights about their account performance, so that users can focus on any issues and take action more quickly. There’s also a new interface to help create new campaigns around specific goals, and although experienced AdWords advertisers may not need this approach, it’s there to try and make things simpler and quicker for most advertisers.

There is also a performance estimates panel, so that advertisers can see the key metrics that are relevant when planning search or display campaigns – although as before, these can show quite a range of numbers and may not relate that closely to actual figures once a campaign starts running. There is also a landing page report, which uses Google’s mobile testing tool to identify if pages are loading quickly and are mobile friendly to site visitors – a key element in helping to improve conversions as we outlined in our November 2016 newsletter.

On the subject of landing pages, Google has also announced the integration of Google Optimize with AdWords, so that users will be able to test their landing pages and gain insights about ads more efficiently. The new Optimize tool was launched earlier this year (as highlighted in our April 2017 newsletter) and is designed to help marketers test and deliver custom site experiences to improve performance. With the new integration between the accounts, users can quickly and easily create new versions of landing pages and then apply them to any combination of AdWords campaigns, ad groups, and keywords without the need for coding or Webmaster input.

All these new tools are designed to help AdWords advertisers constantly improve the management and performance of their accounts, so that of course they achieve great results and ideally spend more advertising dollars! For each advertiser, these tools should be considered, tested and used to see what improvements can be achieved in the ongoing process to achieve a better return on ad spend than their competitors.

If you’d like to know more about the new AdWords experience and how it could help your campaigns, please contact us for more information.

‘Posts’ Released Within Google My Business

Google ‘Posts’ first launched in January 2016 under the name ‘candidate cards,’ but they were only available initially for political candidates to post content that would show up for relevant political search queries. A couple of months later, the feature was available for a very limited number of small businesses. It has slowly expanded since then until the recent full launch for all users.

This has been long anticipated and is now rolling out to all small businesses that use the Google My Business (GMB) platform. The content will appear in both Google search and maps results.

There are several options when writing a post:

• Upload an image
• Write text (up to 300 words)
• Add an event title (with start and end dates and times).

Users can also add call-to-action buttons including “Learn more,” “Reserve,” “Sign up,” “Buy” or “Get offer.”

Google states this give businesses the ability to:

• Share daily specials or current promotions that encourage new and existing customers to take advantage of offers.
• Promote events and tell customers about upcoming happenings at a specific location.
• Showcase top products and highlight new arrivals.
• Choose one of the available options to connect with customers directly from the Google business listing: give them a one-click path to make a reservation; sign up for a newsletter; learn more about latest offers; or even buy a specific product from the business’s website.

This is a useful development that will help businesses to better promote themselves especially upon mobiles, which has been a primary focus of Google for a while now.

If you’d like more information about the Google Posts for GMB or how your business can benefit from a listing, please contact us now.

Welcome to the latest monthly issue of our regular newsletter which features news, tips and advice on effective website marketing, with a particular focus on search engine marketing techniques and trends.

In the first article this month we look at how Google recently provided more information about ranking factors for ‘Google My Business’ listings. This should be of interest to any businesses, or SEO managers who are setting up or managing these listings to target a local market.

We also look at the identification by Google of the new and emerging threat of ‘Clickjacking’. This is a sophisticated form of online threat to Cost-Per-Click display ads, so Google’s defence against it should interest any business running AdWords campaigns.

Finally we look at the latest online advertising expenditure report from the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) UK for the 2015 year, which increased to over £8.6bn and saw an increasing importance of mobiles and, more recently, videos in the online advertising space.

You can read more below, or you can also browse through previous editions of the newsletter by month. You can also follow us on Twitter for the latest developments during the month, or follow our Facebook page or Google+ page for updates.

On to this month’s edition…

Google Updates Details on Improving Local Ranking

In an interesting development from Google – who are usually notoriously coy about releasing detailed information about how to achieve good search rankings – they recently added more details to their help page, named ‘Improve your local ranking on Google’. This provides more insights on how to achieve better visibility with local search results.

As reported in our September 2015 newsletter article ‘Google Changes Local Search Results’, the reduction in the number of listings displayed from 7 to 3 has led to increased competition for those spots. Therefore these recently updated details are welcomed by small business owners and the SEO industry, as any information provided by Google about these factors is always useful.

Google does still do their best to keep the specific details of their search algorithms confidential, to make the ranking system as fair as possible for everyone. Previously, the help page had about five paragraphs of text around relevance, distance and prominence for ranking in the local results. Now, Google has vastly expanded the document which now covers the newer local ‘3-pack’ results, as well as how to be included in that pack and how the ranking positions are determined.

In terms of these rankings, Google still outlines relevance, distance and prominence, but expands upon each of them. Here is a summary of the key points in the revised content:

• Relevance – this refers to how well a local listing matches what someone is searching for. Adding complete and detailed business information can help Google better understand your business and match your listing to relevant searches. Relevant terms in a business name can be important but this should still be the correct name for the business, plus selecting the best category/ies and using a good business description can all help.
• Distance – just like it sounds, how far is each potential search result from the location term used in a search? If a user doesn’t specify a location in their search, Google will calculate distance based on what’s known about their location, which tends to be more accurate if on a mobile device.
• Prominence – this refers to how well-known a business might be. Some places are more prominent in the offline world, and search results try to reflect this in local ranking. For example, famous museums, landmark hotels or well-known store brands that are familiar to many people are also likely to be prominent in local search results. Prominence is also based on information that Google has about a business from across the web (like links, articles and directories).
• Reviews – having Google reviews, including the number and rating score are factored into local search rankings. More reviews and positive ratings are likely to improve a business’s local ranking. A business website’s position in the main search results can also a factor, so SEO best practices also apply to local search optimisation.

You can read the updated Google help file here. If you want to know more about how ranking well in a local listing could help to improve your business, contact us now.

Google Rolls Out More Defences to Thwart Clickjacking

Google recently identified ‘Clickjacking’ as an emerging threat to cost-per-click display ads. This is a type of web attack where the appearance of a website is changed so that a victim does not realise they are clicking on one or more ads. For example, a user may intend to click on a video play button or menu item, but instead clicks an invisible ad unit. They reacted quickly by rolled out new defences to protect advertisers against this threat by using a combination of technology, operations, and policy.

Earlier this year when Google’s operations team identified Clickjacking activity on the display network, they moved swiftly to terminate accounts, removing entities involved in, or attempting to use, this technique to trick users. The engineering team worked in parallel to quickly release a filter to automatically exclude this type of invalid traffic across display ads.

This approach delivered a two-phase solution to publishers who violated Google’s policies: firstly, the operations team cleaned out publishers from the ad systems; secondly, engineers built a new filter as a durable defence to protect against Clickjacking traffic.

The combined Clickjacking defences operate at considerable scale, analysing display ad placements across mobile and desktop platforms, evaluating a variety of characteristics. When the system detects a Clickjacking attempt (or an normal ‘invalid click’), Google zeros-in on the traffic attributed to that placement, and removes it from upcoming payment reports to ensure that advertisers are not charged for those clicks.

Ad traffic quality has always been a priority to Google, which has consistently put in place sophisticated technology to detect and not charge for, or eradicate, ‘invalid clicks’. It’s swift to respond when such emerging threats appear and the combined defences work well to combat those.

If you want more information about how ‘invalid clicks’ and Clickjacking could impact your AdWords campaigns, please contact us now.

Online Advertising Expenditure in the UK Increases to Over $8.6bn

In their latest report for the twelve months ending December 31st 2015, IAB UK stated that the online advertising market experienced another year of significant growth in 2015, growing by 16.4% over the previous year on a like-for-like basis, to finish the year at £8.606bn. This reflects the ongoing growth of the market, and in particular, the strong trends in mobile and video advertising over the past few years.

This latest data comes from the regular Digital Adspend Study conducted by the Internet Advertising Bureau in the UK, together with PwC and shows that all online advertising segments experienced another strong year of growth in 2015. Display ads were up by nearly 25% to over £3bn, with 60% of this spend being reported as programmatic advertising. Paid Search was up by 15% to £4.36bn and Classifieds grew by 5% to £1.1bn. Search remains the largest sector of spend with a 51% share of the market, followed by Display at 35% and Classifieds at 13%. However, as usual the Search figure remains an estimate as Google doesn’t reveal their actual figures for this report and this would comprise the largest part of this spend.

Most notably, mobile advertising continued its meteoric rise, increasing by just over 60% to reach £2.6bn in 2015. This is a significant increase and mobile now accounts for just over 30% of all digital ad spend, compared to just 2% in 2010. This rapid growth should clearly be noted by all online marketers, and was accompanied by strong growth in the social and video advertising sectors.

You can read more here. If you would like more information on how these figures can be used to improve your online marketing, contact us now.

We hope you’ve found this month’s newsletter useful. As usual, if you have any questions or need help with any of these items, please contact us if you need any more information on the items covered, or our advice on any aspect of your website’s performance.

Welcome to the latest issue of our monthly newsletter, featuring news, tips and advice on effective website marketing, with a particular focus on search marketing techniques and trends.

In our first article this month, we take a look at the core principles of mobile site design. This is becoming increasingly important for all businesses, as the rate at which the use of mobiles to access the Internet has risen rapidly over the past few years and, central to this growth, is the issue of usability and speed so that users expect to be able to complete a transaction smoothly.

Our second article examines how the on-going testing by Google of its Home Services procurement in California has resulted in that becoming more humanised, with the Google Concierge service. Our final article this month explains how the PageRank score will no longer be made publicly available by Google – something which should be of interest to all SEO practitioners, as it was an indicator that was erroneously relied upon by many in the industry.

You can read more below, or you can also browse through previous editions of the newsletter by month. You can also follow us on Twitter for the latest developments during the month, or follow our Facebook page or Google+ page for updates.

On to this month’s edition…

Principles of Mobile Site Design

In a quest to establish mobile site design best practices, Google recently partnered with AnswerLab in the U.S. to research how a range of users interacted with a diverse group of mobile sites. Consumers increasingly rely on the mobile web to research and make purchases, which makes it more important than ever for companies to have an effective mobile presence. So this article should be of interest to any business that realises the increasing importance of having a good ‘mobile-friendly’ website.

From this new research, Google has established 25 principles of mobile site design to help companies build mobile sites that meet customers’ requirements and drive conversions. For this article we’ve selected a few of the best practices, but we can also email the full list on request – please contact us for a PDF copy of the report.

For each site that was included in the research, AnswerLab asked the participants to complete a conversion-focused task, like making a purchase, booking a reservation or researching plans/prices. The participants then rated their experience with each site and also the researchers provided ratings based on site experience and task success and logged errors/site issues by severity.

The key findings were:

• Mobile users tend to be very goal-oriented – they expect to be able to get what they need from a mobile site easily, immediately, and on their own terms. So, to ensure success, design the site with their context and needs in mind, without sacrificing richness of content.
• Place prominent calls-to-action – it can be easy for mobile users to miss menu items, so always put your key calls-to-action where you know users will see them. Study participants had the easiest time completing tasks on sites that clearly displayed primary calls-to-action in the main body of the site.
• Keep menus short and sweet – mobile users don’t have the patience to scroll through a long list of options to try and find what they want. So create a shorter menu with distinct categories.
• Make navigation clear and simple – easier navigation encourages users to explore the site and ultimately convert. Also use the business logo as a navigation button to return to the homepage, as mobile users expect that.
• Include a site search box – being able to search a site is vital for helping mobile users find what they’re looking for, quickly. Place your site search near the top of your homepage via an open text field.
• Use click-to-call buttons – mobile users expect this nowadays. Offering a prominent click-to-call button can help to prevent them from leaving the site without purchasing if they feel the business isn’t easy to contact. It also provides the option to buy over the phone rather than online.
• Encourage conversions – allow users to navigate the site without first having to register and also, to purchase as a guest.
• Streamline form entry – most users, whether mobile or not don’t like filling in forms. So whether it’s for making a purchase, getting a quote or joining an email or newsletter list, the user’s conversion experience should be as seamless as possible. This can be achieved through design that produces efficient, clear and concise forms.
• Optimise the entire site for mobile – unsurprisingly, participants had a much easier time navigating mobile-optimised sites than trying to navigate desktop sites on mobile devices. Sites that included a mix of desktop and mobile-optimised pages were actually harder to use than all-desktop sites.

Of course, great design is only part of a mobile site’s success and it’s just as important to get the technical side right as well. Remember to test the site in multiple browsers and devices, to ensure maximum performance. Following these well researched guidelines can help to improve the mobile conversion rate for any business that realises how increasingly important it has become to have a user-friendly mobile site.

If you would like to receive the full PDF report on this research, or to discuss any of the above recommendations, please contact us now.

Google Concierge Humanises Home Services

In a recent development to its Home Services ads (introduced last July and only in California to provide searchers with details of local services), Google has been testing a more ‘human’ version of the service, that’s colloquially named ‘Google Concierge’. This may be a sign of things to come in the UK and should be of interest to the type of businesses – such as plumbers or electricians – that would use a third-party directory to offer their services.

The new ‘Concierge’ service appears to simply emulate the process followed in the Google Home Services ads, but now reduces the consumer steps to simply calling and having Google complete the process, rather than clicking on the few options to complete the process via Google themselves. Clearly Google is looking to enter the Home Services procurement space even if it means engaging a human to complete the query, as opposed to a search result. Even if it’s only an experiment, it’s quite a change for Google, which has always relied on programmatic rather than human solutions.

When you click on the ad, you are taken to this page that encourages a call, or text to directly discuss your project “with a home services expert from Google”. They will then have appropriate plumbers call you to quote and book an appointment.

With this new enhancement of their Home Service Ads product, which allows consumers to call Google directly when searching for a plumber, rather than searching for one and completing the transaction via the Home Services interface, it shows how hard Google is trying to make these sorts of efforts a success. It also implies that the current Home Services ad implementation that has been limited to California has not been that successful – or that refinements are needed before rolling it out to the rest of the country, or globally.

We’ll be keeping track of these developments and whether the service is expanded to more regions and countries. If you’d like more details about this, please get in touch.

Google’s PageRank Score is Discontinued

Google’s numeric rating of how important it considers pages to be will soon no longer be accessible to the public. Website marketers and SEO practitioners should be interested in this decision, as PageRank was an indicator that was erroneously heavily relied upon by most of the industry.

When Google first started, PageRank was something it talked about as part of its research papers, press releases and technology pages to promote itself as a smarter search engine than well-established and bigger rivals at the time, (such as AltaVista and Lycos). The PR score essentially represented a measure of how Google viewed the importance of a web page, based on inbound and outbound links. However, the function of PageRank was diverted in 2000 when Google released the first version of its Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer, which gave those who enabled the PageRank meter the ability to see the PageRank score out of 10 for any page that was viewed.

For most SEO practitioners, the toolbar was an amazing present, a numeric rating of how important Google considered any of their pages to be. It was also a terrible trap for them and a disaster for the web as a whole. PageRank always was and remains only one part of the Google search algorithm, the system that determines how to rank pages. There are many other ranking factors that are also considered and so a high PageRank score did NOT mean that a page would necessarily rank well for any topic. Pages with lower scores could beat pages with higher scores if they had other factors in their favour.

Those practitioners that fell into the trap and wanted a better PageRank then also wanted links back to the site being optimised. So the link-selling economy and ‘link-farms’ emerged. Google wasn’t happy with the Pandora’s Box it had opened and so it began to fight back and ended up in court to defend its actions against companies that provided such links. That didn’t stop link selling and the quest for boosting PageRank scores quickly, rather than earning them naturally, continued for many.

As link spam became prevalent, people were chasing higher PageRank scores by putting links wherever they could, including into blog posts and forums. Eventually, it became such an issue that demands were raised that Google itself should do something about it. It did, in 2005, by releasing the ‘nofollow’ tag, which was a way to prevent links from passing along PageRank credit, but that certainly didn’t end link spam. Google then took 10 months in 2013 to finally update the PageRank scores it was feeding into the toolbar for IE users. It’s likely that it never updated the scores after that and PageRank was finally removed from the Google Toolbar, officially. That made the quest to improve the score futile, as the public could no longer find ways to see those scores.

So Google eventually alleviated the pressure put on the importance of having numerous back-links, but gave the game away that they depend upon them to some extent in their complex ranking algorithm (although no-one but Google knows exactly how much). As such, PageRank – Google’s original ‘secret formula’ – has gone back to being secret. Only Google will know the scores, which it will continue to use, mixed in with the many other factors that make up its ranking algorithm.

If you would like to know more about how we can help your business website improve its rankings through Search Engine Optimisation, contact us now.

We hope you’ve found this month’s newsletter useful. As usual, if you have any questions or need help with any of these items, please contact us if you need any more information on the items covered, or our advice on any aspect of your website’s performance.

Welcome to the latest issue of our monthly newsletter, featuring news, tips and advice on effective website marketing, with a particular focus on search marketing techniques and trends.

In the first article this month we look at Google’s recent update to its Ad Preview and Diagnosis Tool in AdWords and its decision, due to popular demand, to retain the version of the tool that’s available to everyone.

We also look at the radical changes to the new version of Google+ and how reviews will be removed from the G+ Local pages, but will remain in the Search and Maps results. This is a relief to Local SEO practitioners and businesses that source numerous visits to their sites from positive reviews.

You can read more below, or you can also browse through previous editions of the newsletter by month. You can also follow us on Twitter for the latest developments during the month, or follow our Facebook page or Google+ page for updates.

On to this month’s edition…

AdWords Preview Tool’s New Look

Google has always provided a useful advert preview and diagnosis tool to help advertisers view AdWords ads and the interface has recently been given a new look. This is a valuable tool in the AdWords account and has a number of advantages when reviewing the search results, both for paid ads and also for SEO rankings.

The AdWords Ad Preview and Diagnosis Tool is available in the Tools menu when logged into an AdWords account. For advertisers, this is useful to help identify why an advert might not be appearing, or to check that the correct ad is showing from the right adgroup. It shows a preview of a Google search result page for a specific term and for a selected location so that advertisers can check which ads are appearing and in what position, without the influence of any historical or personalisation factors.

The tool allows you to see the exact same results as a Google search, without affecting your ad performance by generating additional impressions, and the results displayed can’t be clicked, as they are simply an image of how the results would be appearing to most searchers at that time.

By changing the version of Google and the user location, the results can also replicate how people in other locations or countries could see the search results, which would be very difficult to replicate in the main Google search interface.

In mid November, Google quietly updated the tool within AdWords and the new interface now embeds a Chrome-like browser directly into it, as opposed to having it open in its own sub-browser. The new interface makes the tool feel more part of the AdWords portal and makes things a bit more compact and cleaner by keeping the user within the overall experience of AdWords.

Google also recently announced that, after hearing feedback from its advertisers, they decided to keep the ‘logged-out’ version of the tool as well, so that anyone can use this, whether or not they have an AdWords account – although the full benefit comes from being logged into AdWords at the same time.

You can view the logged-out version of the tool, here.

If you would like more information about how the Ad Preview and Diagnosis Tool can be used, and how it could benefit your AdWords campaigns, please contact us now.

Reviews Disappear From Google+ Local Listings

Google recently introduced the new Google+ design and announced that reviews are being removed from the Google+ Local listings. This news initially alarmed local SEOs and businesses that rely upon those reviews to attract regional traffic, although Google has fortunately alleviated those concerns – for now – by stating that reviews are still accessible on Google Search and Maps (which have always been the primary way that users find business reviews).

The removal of the G+ Local page that was integrated with the Google My Business listing is seen by many as a move in the right direction, as having so many interlinked G+ products only led to confusion for many users. So the news that the reviews will still be shown on Search and Maps (as well as the Local Finder and the Knowledge Graph) means that the removal of those from just G+ Local will not be a large concern for local SEO, thankfully, as numerous good reviews can be effective at generating traffic.

Google is being positive about the imminent demise of G+, which appears to be another failed attempt to take on Facebook in the social media field. Google states that due to feedback from users, there were two features they kept coming back to: Communities (which now average 1.2 million new joins per day), and Collections (which launched just five months ago and is growing even faster). Therefore the new and fully redesigned Google+ focuses upon interests in the form of those Communities and Collections.

Google+ was always un-intuitive to use, so it’s a wise move that the new G+ is much simpler, although this could also mean that its value and usage declines as well. It’s also more mobile-friendly and cross—platform compatible as it’s been rebuilt across web, Android and iOS so that users now have a fast and consistent experience, whether viewing it on either a big or small screen.

You can read more about the new G+ here and here. There is also a good article about how to get reviews on Google here.

If you would like to know more about how the removal of reviews from G+ Local listings could impact your business, contact us now for more details.

We hope you’ve found this month’s newsletter useful. Please contact us if you need any more information on the items covered, or our advice on any aspect of your website’s performance. Also, if there are any issues you would like to see in future editions of this newsletter, please submit your suggestions to us.

Welcome to the latest issue of our monthly newsletter, which covers news, tips and advice on effective website marketing, with a particular focus on search marketing techniques and trends.

In the first article this month, we take a look at Google’s recent changes to the format of the local search listings when displayed on the main search results page. This should be of significant interest to businesses that have any local ‘My Business’ listings and want to target local searchers.

In our second article, we look at Google’s advice for website owners and managers on how to avoid being targeted by hackers, which is becoming an increasingly common problem. Finally this month, we take a look at Google’s recent launch of the new Adwords Report Editor, a tool which any business running an AdWords campaign should be interested in, to help review and analyse their marketing performance.

You can read more below, or you can also browse through previous editions of the newsletter, either by month. You can also follow us on Twitter for the latest developments during the month, or follow our Facebook page or Google+ page for updates.

On to this month’s edition…

Google Changes Local Search Results

Google has recently changed the way in which local search listings are being displayed on the first page of search results. This should be of interest to any business that has a local business listing, as they are an important asset on the Search Engine Results Page, as Google gives them preference in the organic rankings.

Up until recently, Google would usually display about 7 local business listings in the search results, so this recent change to limit the list to 3 businesses means that there’s more competition for the limited visibility. So having a well-optimised listing is more important than ever.

The new listings have a number of important changes, including telephone numbers being replaced with directions to the address, as these changes are mostly designed for mobile searchers looking for a location. These directions also link to the new Local Finder in Maps, as does clicking upon the business’s red icon in the search results. Within these new Local Finder results there are 20 opportunities for visibility.

The links to the business’s associated Google Plus pages have also now been removed, as G+ is going through a change of focus and will soon be split into two elements – Photos and Streams. Fortunately, this change won’t impact the ability for searchers to view reviews of a company, which will still appear in the grey box that appears when the listing on maps is moused over. Seeing reviews is now a two-click process into the Local Finder and then another click on the reviews, which isn’t very user friendly.

However, if there are sufficient reviews to show the star rating out of 5, there is a link directly to those reviews from the search box. This means that there’s still a good reason for compiling as many of those positive customer reviews as possible because having that visible star rating provides a competitive advantage as it immediately draws the eye towards the business that has it displayed.

Google has been making a series of changes over the past few years to the Places / My Business listings and to the local search results, which can often be a confusing or backwards step for some companies. It’s hoped that it will soon settle on the most effective format and stick with it for a while, as the data that its own Local Analytics provides is currently not completely accurate and so has limited use.

If you would like to know more about how your business can benefit from these latest changes and having a local business listing displayed, contact us now for more details.

How to Avoid Being Targeted by Hackers

Google has recently been publishing a series of articles for website owners with tips and techniques to avoid their websites being hacked. This is because they say that they’ve seen a 180% increase in the number of sites getting hacked over the past year. Therefore if you publish anything online, one of your top priorities should be security, as getting hacked can negatively affect your online reputation and result in loss of critical and private data.

First launched in 2014, Google’s ‘#NoHacked’ campaign aims to educate webmasters about ways to avoid, or identify hacking attacks on their website, and to keep data and account secure. A recent series of blog articles on its Webmaster Central Blog, has added more content to support this campaign.

Some of the key recommendations made by Google have been:

• Ensure that all your website’s software is up-to-date: one of the most common ways for a hacker to compromise your site is through insecure software on your site. Be sure to periodically check the site for any outdated software, especially updates that patch security holes. If you use a Content Management System (CMS), or any plug-ins or add-ons on the site, make sure to keep these tools updated with new releases – this is particularly important for WordPress sites, which are a primary target for out-of-date software.
• Strengthen your account security: creating a password that’s difficult to guess or crack is essential to protecting the site. For example, a password might contain a mixture of letters, numbers, symbols, or be a pass-phrase. Password length is important. The longer your password, the harder it will be to guess.
• Research how your hosting provider handles security issues: Your hosting provider’s policy for security and cleaning up hacked sites is in an important factor to consider when choosing one. If you use a hosting provider, contact them to see if they offer on-demand support to clean up site-specific problems, or a managed administrator services option, to update software. You can also check online reviews to see if they have a track record of helping users with compromised sites clean up their hacked content.
• Use Google tools to stay informed of potential hacked content on your site: having a Google Search Console (Webmaster Tools) account can be useful to receive notifications from Google about malware or other issues on your website. It’s important to have tools that can help you pro-actively monitor your site. The sooner a compromise is discovered; the sooner work can begin on fixing the site. You can also set up Google Alerts on the site to notify you if there are any suspicious results for it.

Website security is a fundamentally critical issue for any online business, so taking heed of these points could make the difference to avoiding, or surviving a hack-attack. Check out the blog articles from Google and check what security processes you have in control for your site.

If you want to know more about how a website security plan could help to protect your online business, contact us now for more details.

Google AdWords Launches Report Editor

At the start of August, Google AdWords announced the new Report Editor tool, which would be rolled out over the coming months. This is yet to appear in some accounts, but it will do so in due course, so it’s well worth being familiar with it in advance.

Report Editor is a powerful AdWords tool that lets you explore account data in brand new ways from within a browser. Access to it will be apparent when the new ‘Reports tab’ appears in the AdWords account and from this tab, you can open a pre-defined report or create your own report from scratch. It provides an easy-to-use interface that enables the building of custom tables and charts that can be segmented, sorted, and filtered to help find the insights that matter to a business.

The key functions are:

• Explore your data with simple drag and drop actions
• Sort, filter, and pivot your data to focus on the slices of information you need
• Visualize your data in pie, bar, or line charts to reveal powerful insights
• Apply multiple segmentations to analyse your data with finer granularity.

Key metrics and dimensions can be examined by simply dragging and dropping the selected ones into a table or chart. Metrics like impressions, clicks, and conversions can be viewed and then you can add dimensions like device, campaign, or adgroup to segment the data further.

It’s also possible to visualise data. Charts can quickly unveil performance trends that may be missed when looking at numbers alone. Now, it’s possible to instantly create a line, pie, or bar chart to surface your key insights. It just takes a click to instantly switch between different charts and tables. Just like tables, it’s possible to save and share charts with others or set them to run regularly.

This release has been warmly welcomed by the AdWords management community, as it makes the data more actionable, providing more powerful insights and vastly reduces the amount of time spent creating ‘old-style’ numeric reports, which don’t highlight the KPIs as effectively.

You can read more about the Report Editor, here. If you would more information about how this important reporting tool can enhance the performance of your AdWords campaigns, contact us now.

We hope you’ve found this month’s newsletter useful. Please contact us if you need any more information on the items covered, or our advice on any aspect of your website’s performance. Also, if there are any issues you would like to see in future editions of this newsletter, please submit your suggestions to us.

Welcome to the latest issue of our monthly newsletter, which covers news, tips and advice on effective website marketing, with a particular focus on search marketing techniques and trends.

In the first article this month, we take a look at Google’s recent updates to its search algorithm and the impact this may have on businesses’ search results. We also examine the imminent update to the Panda algorithm and what impact that’s likely to have on the results.

In our second article this month, we provide a reminder for AdWords advertisers that Google’s support for Adwords Editor v.10.6 ends on July 1st and scrutinise the benefits for AdWords managers of upgrading to the latest v.11.1. Finally this month, we discuss how Google has enhanced the localised “Near Me” search results and what can be done to increase a business’s conversions through the correct use of advert extensions, particularly in mobile ads.

You can read more below, or you can also browse through previous editions of the newsletter, either by month. You can also follow us on Twitter for the latest developments during the month, or follow our Facebook page or Google+ page for updates.

On to this month’s edition…

Google Updates its Search Algorithm

In mid-June, Google confirmed another core search algorithm update which is likely to have an effect on the search ranking results. This is therefore an important issue for any website business to consider and whether these changes may have an impact on their organic rankings and website visits coming from Google.

This latest update by Google was a core ranking change, which is something the search engine does throughout the year. Google stated that it was not related to the previous, significant, Panda or Penguin updates, or related to it’s aim to have more sites secured (using the https protocol) by promoting those in the rankings. (Some sources have in fact reported that the rankings of https domains have actually been adversely effected by the recent changes).

Google’s Panda Update is a search filter introduced in February 2011, designed to stop sites with poor quality content from working their way into Google’s top search results. Panda is updated from time-to-time. Google also launched the Penguin Update in April 2012 to better catch sites deemed to be spamming its search results, in particular those doing so by buying links or obtaining them through link networks designed primarily to boost Google rankings.

In May, Google said they are still working on making these two algorithms refresh faster, but more recently said, “this is not a Panda update. As you know, we’re always making improvements to our search algorithms and the web is constantly evolving. We’re going to continue to work on improvements across the board”. Google has remained quite cagey about the recent change, with Gary Illyes recently saying, “I can’t comment more on this, though. We make hundreds of changes every year”.

So initially, the consensus was that it was simply a normal Google core search update for which they won’t provide further details. But upon further scrutiny, this update may have been related to news content, as data analysis showed that “new newsworthy content” received a boost in the rankings with the update.

The SEO community is expecting to see more updates very soon, as the Panda algorithm is due to be refreshed again. Google has told the community to expect core search algorithm updates in the future, as they continue to work on making search quality better. Gary Illyes announced that the next Panda update will happen in the upcoming weeks and he referred to it multiple times as a data refresh, not an algorithmic change. It’s intended to further refine the accuracy of the targeting of sites with poor quality content. So the ‘shake up’ in the rankings isn’t expected to be quite as dramatic as it would be for the introduction of a complete change to a search results algorithm.

If you would like more information on how the Google algorithm changes could impact the rankings of your business, contact us now for more details.

Google’s Support for AdWords Editor 10.6 Ends July 1st

AdWords Editor was designed with the most sophisticated advertisers in mind, as it helps to reduce the time spent on managing large campaigns by simplifying workflow, but for anyone managing an AdWords campaign, it can be a great time-saver. In February this year, we published the article ‘Google AdWords Editor is Updated’ which described what Google are calling ‘the biggest update to AdWords Editor since its release in 2006’. In this follow-up piece, we take a look at the support for AdWords Editor v.10.6 ending on July 1st and the benefits of upgrading to AE v.11.1.

There are numerous changes made to the latest version, including full support for labels, upgraded URLs, call-only ads and ads in mobile apps. There are also improvements to the search bar, more localisation support and enhancements to overall User Interface navigation, which provides a sleek, fresh new layout that makes viewing data, accounts and edits easier than ever.

More details about 10 new features can be found here. The upgrade symbolises how seriously Google is about catering to advertisers who manage multiple or large accounts. One of the key benefits is the ability to quickly download multiple accounts at once and view them side-by-side. Also, viewing different parts of an account at the same time on multiple screens is a massive change that allows you to view everything at once, making it easier to gain insights into the data.

Two other important benefits are the option to save popular searches, and the function of being able to view the history of recent changes. It’s now possible to undo or redo changes immediately, which is critical when making thousands of changes and can prevent any hard work being lost. Another important addition is the function to create and manage call-only ads in AdWords Editor, as they represent an easy and efficient way for mobile consumers to connect over the phone with businesses.

The updated version of the popular offline Editor has been well received by the AdWords community. The benefits of it certainly outweigh the limitations, so remember to upgrade to it now as support for the older version has now ended and this is not likely to work from this month.

If you would like more information about how the use of AdWords Editor can improve the AdWords management for your business, contact us now.

Google Enhances Localised “Near Me” Search Results

According to Google, 4 out of 5 consumers say they want search ads to be customised to their city, post code or immediate surroundings and that now more than ever, people search online to find things nearby. Interest in “near me” searches on Google has doubled since last year, with 80% coming from mobiles. So it has continued to develop richer local ad formats that deliver more relevant localised information based on what someone searches for.

Last year Google enhanced location extensions to show up to three different locations for a business in a single ad unit. From the end of May the search results were enhanced to show three or four different businesses for location-related searches, such as “nearby restaurants.” Each ad features click-to-call and directions. This new format organises the information that on-the-go consumers need, so they can easily compare options and take action, like calling the business or visiting the store.

In addition to location extensions, there are many types of other extensions in AdWords that can make ads more useful and engaging. These include Sitelinks, Callouts and Reviews. The correct use of the right extensions help businesses reach their goals of driving online and offline conversions, giving customers the information they were seeking “near me”, and reinforcing customer trust. This in turn can lead to significant rises in incremental conversions and so, are critical to get right in the increasingly mobile-centric online world.

If you want to know how the correct use of extensions can help your business benefit from Google’s enhanced localised search results, contact us now.

We hope you’ve found this month’s newsletter useful. Please contact us if you need any more information on the items covered, or our advice on any aspect of your website’s performance. Also, if there are any issues you would like to see in future editions of this newsletter, please submit your suggestions to us.

Welcome to the latest issue of our monthly newsletter for 2015, which covers news, tips and advice on effective website marketing, with a particular focus on search marketing techniques and trends.

In the first article this month, we take a look at Google’s recent release of AdWords Call-only campaigns and describe the pros and cons of these. This significant development should be interesting to businesses and AdWords managers that run campaigns of all sizes.

We also look at Google’s recent upgrade to its My Business listings that provide business owners with more control over how their photos are displayed in the search results. Finally, we examine the importance of getting AdWords ads to show on the first page of the results and how to do so. This should be of significant interest to any business that is currently running any AdWords campaign, or intends to do so at any time in the future.

You can read more below, or you can also browse through previous editions of the newsletter, either by month or by subject. You can also follow us on Twitter for the latest developments during the month, or follow our Facebook page or Google+ page for updates.

On to this month’s edition…

Google Releases AdWords Call-only Campaigns

At the end of February, Google announced the launch of the new AdWords ‘Call-only’ campaigns. These are specially designed to only show ads on smartphones where a call can be made from the search results, and is therefore important for any business where mobile search and call leads are important, so that every paid click can be a phone call to your company.

People are living their lives online and engaging with businesses in new ways. With smartphones in hand, consumers are increasingly looking for products or services while on the go and then placing a call right away. Google states that “70% of mobile searchers call a business directly from search results.”

This is why the new AdWords Call-only campaigns have been introduced, since they are a way for businesses to reach potential customers by prominently showing their phone number, business description and call button when people are searching. It’s uniquely built for businesses that value phone calls more than website clicks.

Many businesses may still prefer to display the link to the website as well as the phone number however, as consumers may wish to have a look at the website before they make the call. It’s still possible to show both the website link and the phone number through the call extension option in the standard AdWords campaigns, but the new ad type is now simpler to create and manage. Firstly, AdWords managers click to create ads, then they can drop down to choose the call-only ad type. There is still a ‘display URL’ which helps to show who users are calling, but this doesn’t link to the site as the ‘destination URL’ from an ad extension does.

This quick set-up can be a time-saver for advertisers and now replaces the existing option to just show the phone number in ads. The advantage of this is that it’s now possible to bid just for phone calls and since every click goes towards a phone call, it’s possible to design a bidding strategy based specifically on CPA or ROAS goal for calls. This helps maximize the value of every call to a business and will be of benefit to those companies that want to target the mobile searcher and encourage direct calls.

The disadvantage is that these Call-only campaigns may lead to a rise in the average cost-per-click for the calls, and as the ads are easier to set up there’s likely to be more competition for the calls than previously. Also, critically, when a click occurs and the number is loaded up on the searcher’s phone, the advertiser is charged, whether or not the call is made. So this may result in lost expenditure on wasted clicks and as such, should be closely monitored for a positive Return On Ad Spend.

If you want more details about these new Call-only campaigns and how they could impact your business, please contact us now.

Google My Business Upgrade Gives More Photo Control

Also announced by Google at the end of February is the ability of businesses to have more control of photos displayed with their search and map results, through an update to the Google My Business product. This is a useful change for any business listed on this service, but especially those with shop-fronts who may want to better present their business online.

Once a business has a Google My Business listing set up and verified, it’s now possible to indicate to Google which image should appear when customers search for a business on Google. While doing that, it’s advisable to give a business a fresh look online by updating the profile, logo and cover photos to ensure these are up to date and as effective as possible.

The new photo interface walks business owners through six categories of images – identity photos, interior photos, exterior photos, photos at work, team photos and additional photos. The dashboard includes explanatory hints for each category. From the identity section – the profile, logo and cover photos – a business manager can select which image will be displayed on search and map results.

This is a useful enhancement to the previously limited choice of how the images could be displayed and will benefit businesses such as restaurants, in particular, that will be able to showcase their food more effectively than before.

If you would like more information on how Google My Business listings can help to improve your business presentation, contact us now for details.

Understanding the First Page Bid Estimate in AdWords

Any AdWords advertiser will know the value of prominently displaying ads on the first page of search results on Google. In order to do this, however, it’s necessary to understand what a first page bid estimate is and then to know that even if the first page bid estimate is met, in some cases the ad still may not appear on the first page of results.

The estimated First Page Bid amount within an AdWords account approximates the cost-per-click (CPC) bid needed for the ad to reach the first page of Google search results when a search query exactly matches the keyword. This estimate is based on the Quality Score and current advertiser competition for that keyword. There is also an estimated Top Page Bid that approximates the CPC bid needed for your ad to appear regularly in the top positions above the main search results.

When managing an AdWords campaign, these estimated bid levels can be seen in the Keywords view, by adding new columns to the standard settings. These estimates can then help an advertiser to make better bidding decisions. On average, ads that appear on the first page or above the search results tend to get substantially more clicks than ads that appear on other search results pages or alongside the search results.

If your first page bid estimate is very high, it may mean that your keyword’s Quality Score is poor or that competition for that term is high. The first page bid estimate is a guide, meant to give you greater insight with which to plan your bidding strategy – but meeting your first page bid estimate isn’t a guarantee of ad position. Ad position will still depend on competition from other advertisers, the components of your Quality Score (expected click-through rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience), your CPC bid, the expected impact of extensions and other ad formats, the budget and account settings, and user and advertiser behaviour.

First page bid estimates try to estimate the bid needed for your ad to generally reach the first page of search results for the device(s) that you’re targeting. If you’re running a campaign that is only serving on a single device, the bid estimate will reflect the bid required to generally reach the first page of search results on that device. Otherwise, the estimate will reflect the bid generally required across all devices, which can include mobiles, where there are fewer ads shown on the first page of search results.

In some cases, your ad may still rank on the first page even if the first page bid level isn’t reached, or it might not appear on the first page of search results even if first page bid estimate is met! Therefore it’s necessary to keep in mind that this estimate is a guideline, based on your keyword’s Quality Score and recent advertiser competition that applies to search queries exactly matching your keyword. It isn’t a guarantee about your where your ad will appear, but it does indicate that you may be losing out on possible search impressions for your target market.

Below are a few common reasons your ad might not show on the first page, even when you meet this bid estimate:

• Other advertiser activity: There could be new competition on your keywords.
• Search customer activity: The searches customers are performing might not match up exactly with your keywords.
• Budget changes: If you’ve changed your budget recently and it’s been spent, your ad might not run.

If your ads continue to not appear on the first page of search results when you meet the first page bid estimate, then it’s necessary to improve your Ad Rank. You can read about understanding ad position and Ad Rank here.

If you want to know more about bidding strategies and how we can help to improve your AdWords campaigns, please contact us now for details.

Welcome to the latest issue of our monthly newsletter for 2015, which covers news, tips and advice on effective website marketing, with a particular focus on search marketing techniques and trends.

In the first article this month, we take a look at Google’s recent release of its ‘Pigeon Update’ algorithm that’s intended to improve the quality of local search results and we consider what impact that’s having on UK business listings.

We also look at the changes that have improved the level of sophistication and ability to target potential customers through the Google AdWords Display Network. Finally, we examine how the global release of Google’s latest version of the popular AdWords Editor tool has been the most significant change to it since its inception in 2006.

You can read more below, or you can also browse through previous editions of the newsletter, either by month or by subject. You can also follow us on Twitter for the latest developments during the month, or follow our Facebook page or Google+ page for updates.

On to this month’s edition…

Google’s ‘Pigeon Update’ and Local Search Rankings

Google originally launched their new ‘Pigeon Update’ algorithm on July 24, 2014 for US English results, stating that it provides “more useful, relevant and accurate local search results that are tied more closely to traditional web search ranking signals”. Also, in an attempt to improve the quality of local searches, Google are “now relying on the factors such as location and distance to provide better search results to users”.

This local search ranking algorithm was unusually termed ‘Pigeon’ by industry watchers, following the previous Panda and Penguin updates in recent years – the reasoning was also that pigeons know their locality well enough to be able to fly back home! Following 6 months of usage on Google.com, ‘Pigeon’ was rolled out to UK search results in the middle of December 2014 and there have been some significant changes noted in the local search engine results since then.

The ‘Pigeon’ algorithm isn’t one focussed on fighting ‘spammy’ results, as long as there have been no unscrupulous methods implemented to get better local search ranking results that don’t comply with Google’s guidelines. However, it has altered the local listings in the search results – particularly where the small panel of 3-8 local results would appear on the main Google search page for the locally focused search term. There are now fewer ‘local’ listings for some search terms and early reports indicate that for some searches, Google is opting to display a higher percentage of standard web page listings, instead of the local results derived from the Google My Business listings.

Google also seems to be heavily favouring the physical proximity of a business location to the search intent, to provide a better ranking in from ‘Google My Business’, particularly for mobile searches. This is one of the most significant changes in this recent update, and of course something that can’t be changed by a business! However, there are also some ranking rewards for local businesses who have invested wisely in their own website’s SEO, as this ‘Pigeon Update’ appears to use more of Google’s main web search ranking signals built in to it.

For example, authoritative backlinks matter more in web search than they do in local search. Those and unique, relevant website content are now also becoming an increasingly significant factor in ‘local’ results along with the physical location of the business. As such, the update should reinforce that it is more vital than ever to have a mobile responsive, useful, properly optimised website for your local business to help target customers in your area. This is a crucial consideration in light of the mobile search revolution – as the mobile browsers have much less space available, attaining the top rankings in those is becoming increasingly important.

If you want to know more about how to improve your local and mobile search results, contact us now for more details.

Improved Google AdWords Display Network Targeting

Google recently announced that it’s changing the way in which customers can be reached through their AdWords Display Network. This should be interesting to any online marketeers that use this network, especially for widespread company branding which targets customers’ ‘other interests’.

Since 2009, advertisers have been using ‘interest category’ marketing to connect with people across the Google Display Network based on their interests. Since then, Google have added new and more powerful interest-based capabilities: affinity (for enthusiasts), custom affinity (for niche segments), and in-market audiences (for ready to buy shoppers).

As these more sophisticated audience tools offer advertisers additional flexibility and control, since January 15 2015 ‘other interests’ is no longer a targeting option for new and existing audience campaigns. Current campaigns that target ‘other interests’ will continue to run until June 2015, after which they’ll be automatically upgraded to one of these options:

Affinity audiences: Reach TV-like segments at scale to drive brand awareness (e.g. Kraft used affinity audiences to reach cooking enthusiasts to build awareness for their new ‘Fresh Take’ brand).
Custom affinity audiences: Niche segments that can be found and custom-tailored for a brand (e.g. Electronic Arts used custom affinity audiences to engage fans of specific NFL teams in their recent Madden GIFERATOR campaign. They created 32 custom affinity audiences, one per NFL team, to reach fans of specific teams with display ads timed to the real-time action on the field).
In-market audiences: Reach consumers while they’re actively browsing, researching or comparing products related to a category you choose (e.g. the online car dealership Autobytel uses in-market audiences to reach customers actively researching specific models, price comparisons, and consumer reviews, as opposed to casual car enthusiasts).

So the level of granularity that Google provides for controlling the targeting on its Display Network is increasing in its sophistication and will continue to do so, to give companies the best opportunities to target their customers most effectively.

You can read more about the enhanced GDN reach and if you want more information on how to better focus your Display Network targeting, contact us now for more details.

Google AdWords Editor is Updated

Google recently released an updated version of one of its most popular management tools – AdWords Editor – and this update was a significant one with some major changes to the look and functionality of the tool. AdWords Editor was designed with the most sophisticated advertisers in mind, as it helps to reduce the time spent on managing large campaigns by simplifying workflow, but for anyone managing an AdWords campaign, it can be a great time-saver.

AdWords Editor 11.0 represents the biggest update to the application since its initial release in 2006. It’s been redesigned from the ground up, with old features being enhanced and new ones added to help do more, in less time. With a brand new visual design and faster interface, AdWords Editor 11.0 is built to improve efficiency as you view changes as they’re are made across accounts, campaigns and adgroups.

The new design and interface mimics the Windows OS by enabling the ability to view multiple accounts at once by opening as many account windows as desired. Arrange them side-by-side and even copy and paste or drag-and-drop items between them. You can also add and manage all of the accounts, download data, and monitor status in the new accounts manager. It’s also possible to open multiple windows to view different parts of your account at the same time – for instance, you can now open a new window to view your keyword list while creating your related ads.

As the number of accounts grows, so does the need to find the things in them quickly. So there’s now a panel for selecting type lists. This feature removes the need to navigate using tabs, so you can quickly perform common tasks while instantly accessing your campaigns, advanced features and settings. If you’re looking for something specific, use the improved, advanced search bar. You can now apply multiple search criteria and filters, and even save popular searches for future use. Once you’ve found what you’re looking for, it’s easy to navigate and make changes using simple keyboard shortcuts (Mac & Windows).

Making large-scale changes is now even easier in AdWords Editor 11.0. Advanced multi-select functionality makes viewing and updating specific parts of an account simple. Select any combination of campaigns and ad groups to view their ads or keywords, and paste them into multiple campaigns and ad groups at once. You can also manage your Shared Library to assign bid strategies and sitelinks across multiple campaigns and ad groups. The ‘Make multiple change’ tool now automatically organises your text into rows and columns as you add, update, or remove multiple items on the fly, and a detailed history of your recent changes is now just a click away, along with the option to quickly undo or redo multiple changes in sequence or in bulk.

This update has been warmly received by the AdWords marketing industry, as it isn’t a forced update that immediately renders the previous version obsolete. Both versions can be used concurrently as mastery of the new version is attained, so that by April 10, 2015 support for previous versions will be withdrawn. You can read more and download the new version here.

If you want more information about how the new version of AdWords Editor can simplify your campaign management, contact us now.