Google is finally adding its coveted Trusted Store badge to free shopping listings in search results. 

The badge has been available to reliable brands on the platform for nearly a decade at this point and has been proven to increase trust in online retailers by verifying your reputation. 

Stores running paid shopping listings have been able to take advantage of this by showcasing their Trusted Store badge on their ads, however, this has not been an option for those whose free product listings get shown. 

What Is The Google Trusted Store Badge?

The Google Trusted Store badge is a small icon representing that your business has been recognized by Google for delivering great products, fast shipping, and amazing customer service. 

Though the badge is typically thought to represent pages with consistently high Google customer reviews, eligibility is actually determined by Shopping Experience Scorecard scores. These scores are determined by monitoring submitted data from online stores to assess the speed and quality of service. 

If Google determines that you are an upstanding brand, you will then be notified that you are eligible to be a Google Trusted Store. 

What Is The Benefit of Being a Google Trusted Store?

Beyond earning a badge that will now appear on both paid and free product listings, being a Trusted Store brings several benefits for brands, including increased product listing engagement, more prominently displayed product listings, and increased trust from potential customers.

Perhaps most notably, being a Trusted Store also gives brands the ability to offer free purchase protection for customers, up to a specific amount of money. 

New Analytics Tools For Free Product Listings

Along with announcing that free product listings in Google search results may display the Trusted Store badge, the search engine launched a number of analytics tools for free listings. 

These new reporting tools provide details across several metrics including:

  • Total traffic
  • Impressions
  • Conversion rates
  • Pricing competition

This marks the first time performance data has been available to merchants for free product listings. 

The Big Picture

These upgrades to free product listings bring them more in line with paid shopping listings, making them potentially more attractive to online retailers. Thanks to the introduction of the new reporting tools, brands can also start refining their listings to improve click-through and conversion rates based on their recent performance and shopping trends.

Video ads are coming to TikTok’s search results if a recently spotted test is to be believed.

David Herrmann, president of Hermann Digital, pointed out the ads earlier this week in a tweet that shows a clip with a small “Sponsored” label at the top of TikTok search results.

Based on the location in the ad – above the “Others searched for” section, it seems safe to assume the ads will typically appear within the first few search results shown. 

Unfortunately, information about this ad test is extremely limited. According to Herrmann, the ads currently can’t be targeted by keyword, though he implies the ability to do so is coming soon. 

Instead, the best way to ensure your videos get shown as relevant ads in the current iteration is to create video “how-to’s” aimed at solving specific problems. 

“Make your ads solve problems, don’t just sell. Drive them to advertorial pages,” Hermann tweeted. “This is Pinterest 2.0, but better cause people buy.”

Another detail that is unclear is how brands might get access to this ad experiment. With no official word about the ads from TikTok, the assumption is that you must be a brand with an established presence on the app and have a managed advertising account.

Once running these ads, brands will receive a list of search terms driving clicks on their video ads, helping them generate more focused and better-targeted content and ads in the future.

The ads are obviously in an early form and will likely be expanded before they are widely accessible to brands on the platform. At the same time, they show how TikTok is working to provide new ways to monetize your presence on the app and reach new audiences with high purchasing intent. 

Given that TikTok’s users already seem uniquely primed to buy products they discover through the app, this looks to potentially be a major upcoming advertising opportunity for many brands.

Google Business Profiles (previously known as Google My Business) are a crucial part of any brand’s online presence. Not only does it control how your company appears in local search results, but it also powers Google Maps listings.

So how does Google balance keeping these local listings easily accessible for business owners without leaving listings vulnerable to manipulation or outright fraud?

The search engine explained how it combined everything from its search algorithms and machine learning tools to human reviews to block more than 100 million abusive business profile updates last year. 

Thanks to this approach, the company believes that less than 1% of the content viewed through Google Business Profiles and Google Maps was fraudulent or abusive in 2021. 

How Google Fights Business Profiles Spam

Over the course of 2021, Google says it blocked over 100 million abusive or fraudulent edits to Google Business Profiles. This includes a wide range of activities, including creating fake business listings, fraudulent or abusive reviews, or attempts to hijack business listings. 

Here’s the breakdown of the types of actions taken by Google to fight Google Business Profile abuse:

  • Removed over 7 million fake Business Profiles on Google Maps. Google said more than 630,000 of those Business Profiles were removed through user reports.
  • Prevented 12 million attempts to create fake Business Profiles on Google Maps.
  • Stopped 8 million fraudulent attempts to claim Business Profiles on Google Maps.
  • Disabled over 1 million accounts due to policy-violating activity, such as online vandalism or fraud.
  • Removed or blocked 95 million policy-violating reviews, over 60,000 of which were taken down due to COVID-related instances.
  • 1 million reviews were taken down through user reports.
  • Blocked or removed 190 million photos and 5 million videos that were blurry, low quality, or violated Google’s content policies.

Can Google Make Up For Past Mistakes?

Historically, Google has struggled to prevent misuse or manipulative behavior across its local business listings. There are countless horror stories easily found online from businesses that had their listing stolen from them, vandalized by the competition, or brought down by fraudulent reviews.

Hopefully, with actions like these, the platform can continue to undo this legacy and provide a reliable platform for both users and the businesses included.

Google is introducing new vehicle ads specifically for car dealerships to reduce the gap between online car sales and in-person dealerships. 

While car sales have traditionally been something largely done in person, many dealerships have seen big shifts towards online sales over the past two years. Not only did Google’s data show that 89% of car buyers research their vehicle online, but 16% also did their entire purchase online in 2021.

What Are Google Vehicle Ads?

With the new ads, dealerships can now highlight cars for sale nearby in relevant searches. The ads include a few important details about the car, including the location, make and model, price, and dealership name. 

If tapped or clicked, the ads then take users to the dealer’s website for more information about the vehicle. From there, they can get more information to come to make a purchase in-person or to order online (if your dealership provides that service). 

How To Gain Access to Google Vehicle Ads

As a new test, vehicle ads are only available to auto dealerships in America.

The ad format is also not automatically shown within ad accounts. To gain access, you or a representative for your company must contact Google. 

Once given access, you will need to upload your inventory through Google Merchant Center and connect your vehicle inventory feed to your Google Business Profile. 

What Vehicles Are Allowed

Currently, only commercial auto dealerships are eligible to run vehicle ads. Private or individual sellers are not eligible. 

Google also has several restrictions on what vehicles are allowed. At the moment, only non-commercial passenger vehicles are eligible in vehicle ads. 

Restricted vehicles include:

  • Recreational vehicles
  • Commercial vehicles
  • Farm vehicles
  • Buses
  • 2-wheelers
  • Trains
  • Boats
  • Airplanes
  • Any outdoor utility vehicles

In early testing, Google says it saw an average increase of 25% in conversions for auto dealerships, along with more qualified leads and increased awareness of accompanying text ads.

If you’re a business owner or operator, you’ve probably been told 100 times by 100 different people that you just HAVE to invest in Search Engine Optimization. Unfortunately, you’ve also likely never really heard why SEO is so important beyond broad mentions of “being found online” or that “everyone uses Google.”

Marketers and salespeople have a bad habit of talking about the power and benefits of optimization without explaining what sets it apart from other types of online marketing, how it impacts your ability to reach new markets, and why many SEO packages don’t cut it. 

So today, I wanted to do just that.

What Is Search Engine Optimization

Before we can talk about what makes SEO special, we have to talk a bit about what it is.

In the simplest terms, search engine optimization is the name for a wide range of strategies and techniques used to increase your visibility on search engines. 

In the past, this could be boiled down to the phrase “making your website the top result on Google searches.” These days, search engines are much more complex and what might be the top result for one user might be completely different for another.

As such, SEO has evolved to focus more on overall visibility across Google’s many systems with the goal of attracting as many potential customers as possible to your site.

How SEO Works

For our purposes today, we aren’t going to go very in-depth discussing the numerous strategies or techniques used in SEO. Otherwise, we’d be here all day.

What matters for this discussion is understanding that these methods affect how Google sees and ranks your site. 

While some strategies are dedicated to helping Google understand the content that is on your site, others are intended to boost the overall value of your site. Combined, these approaches help ensure Google picks your site for relevant searches and gives you the best chance to attract website traffic.

Why SEO Is Essential in 2022

Google Is The Most Visited Site In The World

Marketers always like to say “everyone uses Google” to emphasize the importance of SEO (and they aren’t necessarily wrong), but what does that really mean?

It means that Google is a massive part of daily life for practically everyone around the globe, and can massively influence what information we see, who we do business with, and what products people buy.

To give you an idea of how much influence Google has compared to any other site online, the search engine sees more than 3x the traffic that the second most popular website – YouTube (which is also owned by Google.)

The most popular site in the world NOT owned by Google – Facebook – sees less than a quarter of the traffic seen by Google.com.

No matter how you try to spin it, Google acts as the central hub to the internet for the vast majority of people out there. If you don’t play by their rules, you risk being disconnected from this hub and any potential traffic you might get.

Organic Search is Still The Main Driver of Traffic

When considering where to invest their marketing budget, many businesses find themselves asking the same question: “Why should I spend money on SEO, which is complicated and not guaranteed to pay off, when I could instead run ads that are guaranteed to appear above those search results?”

Organic search results get underestimated because ranking highly is rarely a sure thing – even for the biggest companies. Meanwhile, paid search ads are built around driving results without uncertainty.

Despite this, there is actually a very simple reason you should invest in organic search optimization.

Organic search results drive more than twice the traffic compared to the next leading traffic source. Compared to paid ads, organic search results drive more than 5x the traffic to websites.

At the end of the day, the majority of search results still result in a user clicking an organic link from regular search results. So while it may seem riskier, investing in search engine optimization has the chance for much larger rewards.

Better SEO Means Better User Experience

Every brand wants its website to provide the best user experience possible. A positive user experience increases the likelihood of driving conversions, while negative user experiences can sour people on your company entirely.

So, it should come as good news that the majority of SEO practices are intended to improve user experience in a variety of ways including speeding up your site, making it easier to use, and improving accessibility.

By ensuring you are optimized for search engines, you are also investing in improving your site for the real potential customers who will soon be visiting.

SEO Is a Process That Is Always Changing

Companies looking to save some cash on SEO will have an easy time finding dozens of cheap SEO packages across the web. The problems with the packages are numerous, but the biggest red flag is the assumption that SEO is something you do once.

In reality, SEO is something that needs to be done regularly to have a real impact. 

When left alone, Google assumes websites are becoming outdated or irrelevant. No matter what industry you are in, there are always new products coming out, new information that can benefit your customers, and new ways to improve your site.

Additionally, Google itself is always changing. The company releases new guidelines, algorithm updates, and features for webmasters seemingly every day. Any cheap package deal is unable to take these updates into account and help your company stay ahead of the rapidly changing search results.

SEO Results Amplify With Time

Unlike almost any other form of marketing, search engine optimization is one of the few investments which tends to build on itself for greater and greater results.

As you optimize your website and create quality content to improve your search rankings, you also provide a more robust presence online. Your website becomes an even greater resource to potential customers. You start getting linked to by others in your industry. People start sharing your brand around social media. 

Ads may drive immediate results, but these tend to stabilize with time. Effective search engine optimization, on the other hand, pays increasing dividends the longer you invest in it.


The role search engines play in our lives will only continue to grow as people become more connected and expect information to always be at their fingertips. For all these reasons, it is imperative that companies invest in the best optimization practices possible if they want to continue reaching prospective customers in an increasingly digital world.

Due to the long-term impact of SEO, the best time to start optimizing your website was probably months or years ago. The second best time, however, is now.

Twitter is signaling its plans to let brands establish dedicated shops on the platform through a limited test.

The company revealed it is introducing dedicated shopping pages including up to 50 products to a handful of brands as an experiment ahead of plans to roll out the feature to more retailers later this year. 

The feature allows a brand or business to add a simple “View shop” button to its profile page, which will link to a Twitter-hosted e-commerce page. When clicked, the button will then take users to your actual online store or website, where the transaction can be completed. 

As Twitter described the new feature in its blog post announcement:

“People are already talking about products on Twitter. We want Twitter Shops to be the home for merchants on Twitter where they can intentionally curate a catalog of products for their Twitter audience and build upon the product discussions already happening on our service by giving shoppers a point of action where a conversation can become a purchase.”

Only Available to a Select Few

As Twitter Shops are currently considered a beta test, the feature is only available to a small number of brands in the U.S. Specifically, the announcement only mentioned five brands that have utilized the feature so far – Verizon, Arden Cover, the Latinx In Power podcast, Gay Pride Apparel, and All I Do Is Cook.

Additionally, only iPhone users are currently able to view or interact with the shops, though the company plans to roll the feature out to other devices in the future.

Social Stores Are Becoming The Norm

The new feature underscores the increasingly blurry line between social media and online shopping. Several other platforms, including TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram have rolled out their own shopping tools to brands on their platform, though the most obvious comparison is Pinterest’s current shopping system where users can discover brands and shop their products on the platform before finalizing their purchase through retailer’s own sites.

For more, read Twitter’s full announcement here.

Inspired by the popularity of TikTok, Google is working to find new ways to include short-form videos in search results. 

Google Product Manager Danielle Marshak revealed this during a recent episode of the Search Off the Record podcast with hosts Gary Illyes and Lizzi Sassman from Google’s Search Relations team. 

Why Google Is Interest In Short-Form Videos

Though the entire episode is more broadly focused on discussing how Google handles video content in search results, the conversation eventually turns to the most popular video format of the moment – short vertical videos less than 5 minutes in length. 

Beyond their popularity, the Google employees agree there is a lot of interest in short videos because they are easily digestible and can contain a lot of information in a compact package.

As Marshak says:

“And this format, it’s really cool because as I mentioned, it is very concise. You can get a lot of information in a short period of time, and you can also get a loot of different views and perspectives…

“So we think this kind of content could be useful for a lot of different types of search queries, and we’ve been experimenting with how to show it to users more often.”

Could TikTok Videos Appear In Search Results?

Since TikTok is practically synonymous with this specific type of short video, it was only a matter of time before the social video app was brought up. 

Interestingly, Gary Illyes explained that the unique way TikTok works makes its content much easier for the search engine to crawl and index compared to others like Snapchat or Instagram.

Since every TikTok video has a unique URL and can be opened directly in a web browser, Illyes says there is a chance the videos could be directly indexed and shown in search results:

“You can actually open it on the laptop and you will end up on a web page and you can actually watch it on the web page. You don’t have to have the TikTok app for watching the video.

“So I imagine that if they allow crawling – I haven’t checked – then we can probably index those videos as well.”

Other Ways Google Is Integrating Short Videos Into Search

When asked about other types of short video content that Google might include in search results pages, Marshak mostly focused on educational or informational content, such as recipes:

“So let’s say, again, you’re searching for some new ideas to make banana bread. And right now, you might see traditional recipes, you might see longer videos, but you could also see short videos, which could just give you a different style or perspective.

“And people’s preferences are different. Some people might prefer to read; some people might prefer a longer video; some people might prefer short videos.

“And so we want to offer a lot of different options to get that type of information, in the format that is most useful for you. So that’s one example.”

From what was said, it seems the ideas are still in their early stages but the episode makes it clear that Google is taking TikTok and its popular video format very seriously. You can expect to see much more of it in search results sooner, rather than later.

Listen to the full episode of the Search Off the Record podcast here.

It is no secret that the past few years have wildly shaken up the world – especially when it comes to doing business. Coronavirus, international shipping delays, and rising prices have drastically reshaped customer needs and expectations in virtually every market – as a new report from Google makes particularly clear.

Using a comparison of search trends from 2021 to 2022, Google’s data reveals what customers are looking for as we settle into a “new normal” and brace for even more new challenges in the future.

What Customers Want

More than anything, the search trends from Google reveal that customers are looking for brands that can provide the goods and services they are looking for when they need them. This is reflected by significant increases in searches extended hours and quick service. 

For example, the report shows these search phrases saw major increases over the past year:

  • “Late night shopping”: Up 100% year-over-year
  • “24/7 customer service”: Up 500% year-over-year
  • “Next day flower delivery”: Up 800% year-over-year

Return to In-Person Events

Google search data makes it very clear that consumers are itching to get back out and enjoy in-person events again, now that the coronavirus pandemic appears to be winding down. This has led to growth in searches for phrases like:

  • “Cinema near me”: Up 300% year-over-year
  • “Seating chart”: Up 600% year-over-year
  • “Spring break”: Up 100% year-over-year
  • “Unique things to do in”: Up 100% year-over-year

Some Pandemic Trends Linger

While shoppers are eager to ditch some aspects of the pandemic, Google pinpoints a few trends which popped up during quarantines and appear to be sticking around. These “sticky” trends include:

  • “Makeup game”: Up 700% year-over-year
  • “Best movies to stream right now”: Up 300% year-over-year
  • “Nursery plants near me”: Up 100% year-over-year
  • “Hair trends female”: Up 800% year-over-year

For more, check out Google’s full Global Insights Briefing for 2022 here.

At the start of 2022, LinkedIn Chief Product Officer, Tomer Cohen put out a call for suggestions on how to improve the platform for professionals and the brands they represent.

Just over a month later, the company says it is already working to integrate these suggestions with a slew of updates to how users can share content, manage their feed, and track their content’s performance.

We’ve collected the highlights below:

LinkedIn’s Updates Based On Your Feedback

Giving You More Control Over Your Feed

LinkedIn is making it easier to signal the types of content you want to see and to flag content that isn’t relevant to you.

Not only can you more easily follow and unfollow connections, but the company has also introduced quick ways to remove content by clicking the 3-dot icon in the top right corner of posts and selecting “I don’t want to see this.”

Lastly, LinkedIn is making it easier to find the content, pages, and conversations most relevant to your goals with improved search tools.

Connect With Industry Authorities To Build Your Career

LinkedIn has always positioned its platform as a tool for those starting out or looking to grow further to connect with the established experts and leaders in their markets. 

To further this goal, the company is working to create new opportunities for career advancement through live events, live courses, and even the chance to speak with industry-leading content creators like Jonathan Fields and Mita Mallick.

Better Measure Your Content Performance

Lastly, LinkedIn is introducing new ways to track how your posts are performing and refine your content strategy.

In addition to broad metrics like the number of people who view your posts, the company says it is going to be soon adding more granular details about your audience including their job titles, engagement patterns, and helpful demographic information.


Obviously, many of these features were already in progress before LinkedIn surveyed users. Still, they show how the company is looking to expand its capabilities in the exact areas users are also most interested in using to build their careers.

The coronavirus pandemic brought unprecedented changes to practically every market around the world. While existing businesses struggled with new safety requirements, the number of new business openings slowed significantly.

As we come to the end of the second year of living with the COVID pandemic, though, it appears new business openings are close to reaching pre-pandemic levels, according to Yelp’s COVID-19 Second Anniversary Report

Specifically, new business openings in the second year of the pandemic were just 1% below rates from the year before the pandemic (2019). Over the year, at least 521,926 new businesses were established – up 14% from the first year of the pandemic. 

How New Variants Affected New Business Openings

While new business openings are on the rise overall, this is not happening without setbacks. The Delta and Omicron variants caused dips in openings, especially in the largest cities across the US. In many cities, these hurdles slowed growth enough to cause an overall decrease in openings.

Despite this, other cities like Atlanta, Dallas, and Detroit helped offset these losses. 

New Expectations For Businesses

While openings are returning to pre-pandemic rates, Yelp emphasized that the coronavirus pandemic is still strongly influencing consumer behavior. For example, interest in outdoor seating continued to rise by 292% in the second year of the pandemic. 

Similarly, consumer interest continues to be heightened for outdoor activities, including scooter rentals, outdoor movies, and the newly trendy pickleball.

The Big Picture

Businesses continue to stand strong in the face of the COVID pandemic, despite new challenges like labor shortages and supply bottlenecks. Being adaptable has long been a key trait of successful businesses, especially after the onset of the COVID pandemic.