Android users will soon be able to install apps to their smartphones directly from Google search results. According to Android Police, Google has begun testing the new feature which will let users bypass the Play Store and directly install an app by performing a Google search.
To try out the feature, open the Google app on any Android phone and search for any app you want to install. Within the Google card, which previously directed users to the Play Store, you will now see an Install button.
If you press the Install button, your phone will ask for the normal permissions that appear with all Play Store app download. If you accept, the app will immediately begin downloading and installing.
The feature hasn’t been rolled out to all Android phones, so there is no guarantee you will be able to directly install the app. Many users are still being directed to the Play Store.
Ryan Whitwam of Android Police speculates the feature is just in testing currently, and will see a wider rollout in the future. He also suggests the feature is likely to be available only in the Google app and not through Chrome.
The bad news is half or more of your website traffic likely comes from bots. The good news is that is actually a huge improvement from in the past.
A new report from Imperva Incapsula shows that approximately 48.5% of all traffic to websites comes from bots, not actual online users. That number comes from a review of over 19 billion visits to 35,000 Incapsula client websites around the world with a minimum daily traffic count of at least 10 human visitors gathered over a 90 day period in 2015.
According to the data, 51.5% of all Web traffic comes from human users, while 29% come from “bad bots” which automate spam or other malicious activity, and 19.5% came from “good bots” which are used by search engines and other online services.
While this sounds bad, the share of human traffic is actually rising compared to past year. The report explains:
In a similar 2013 study conducted by Imperva, humans made up only 31.5% of all visits to sites, compared with 51.5% in 2015. This shift is mainly due to an increase in human traffic as more people use the Web and a decrease in good bot traffic.
The ratio of bots-to-humans your website receives is likely influenced by how popular your site is, as the most popular sites examined showed the smallest ratio of bot traffic (39.7%). In comparison, the least popular sites included in the traffic had the highest share of bot traffic (85.4%).
No matter what percentage of your traffic comes to bots, the best solution is to continue emphasizing marketing that directly connects with real humans such as social media marketing and PPC.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2016-01-11 12:57:232020-08-08 22:18:01Report Shows Almost Half Of All Traffic Comes From Bots
With 2016 looming, it can be tempting to kick back and celebrate the New Year and successful holiday season. But, as any seasoned marketer can tell you, there is never any time for rest in the world of SEO.
The past year has seen huge changes in the world of SEO, with a newly emboldened emphasis on mobile optimization and responsive design, the change to 3-pack results in local search, and the expected new algorithms running over at Google.
With that in mind, it’s time to start looking forward and preparing for a booming 2016 by predicting the biggest trends likely to define the coming year. CJG Digital Marketing is doing just that with a new infographic detailing the hottest SEO trends in 2016.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2015-12-30 16:00:502015-12-30 16:00:50Get Set For 2016 With The Hottest New Trends In SEO [Infographic]
Google is continuing its efforts to promote privacy in search by prioritizing indexing HTTPS pages over their HTTP equivalents.
In the announcement, Google explains its long-term aim is to eventually direct users to secure webpages with a private connection. The step to only index HTTPS pages when an HTTP equivalent exists is their most recent move in this process, following the small rankings boost given to HTTPS pages last year.
Unlike the change to Google’s algorithm in August 2014, this move will not have any effect on rankings. Instead, it simply means that Googlebot will only index the HTTPS version of a URL when both an HTTPS and HTTP version exist.
While Google’s commitment to secure search may lead to more rankings boosts for HTTPS pages in the future, this change is mostly to improve the efficiency of Google’s current indexing process. As they explain in their announcement:
“Browsing the web should be a private experience between the user and the website, and must not be subject to eavesdropping, man-in-the-middle attacks, or data modification. This is why we’ve been strongly promoting HTTPS everywhere.”
Christmas is almost here and the New Year isn’t far behind, which means it is time for the annual end-of-the-year lists to show us what people were searching for this year. Yesterday, Google released their “Year In Search” video and list to highlight the most important topics of 2015.
The most searched for topic of the year is also possibly the most tragic; Google counted over 897 million searches about Paris this year, largely due to two major terrorist attacks in January and November. Particularly, in the immediate wake of the November attacks, Google saw the most searches about the city ever performed in the search engine’s history.
The Year In Search list also features several top news events such as Hurricane Patricia, the discovery of water on Mars, the terrorist group ISIS, and the earthquake in Nepal.
While the end of the year list features several events that united us through tragedy, it also shows the more lighthearted topics that caught our collective hearts and minds over the past year.
“Star Wars” was a huge topic of discussion for the internet, with more than 155 million searches before its world premiere. However, the most searched for film of the year was actually another highly anticipated sequel. “Jurassic World” took the lead spot, although Google didn’t detail exactly how many searches it received.
With all the focus on Donald Trump these past few months, you might expect him to lead the most searched for public figures, but The Donald only came in seventh place behind Charlie Sheen and the Orange Is The New Black character Ruby Rose.
Instead, the three most talked about public figures of the year were Lamar Odom, UFC fighter Ronda Rousey, and Caitlyn Jenner, who saw a huge spike in interest following her gender transition announcement on ABC News’ “20/20” in April.
You can see Google’s inspirational Year In Search video below, or you can browse all the Year In Search lists at Google Trends.
https://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/Google-Logo.jpg00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2015-12-17 15:40:022015-12-17 15:40:02Google’s Year In Search Lists Show Us What We Were Searching For In 2015
Most online advertisers consider conversion tracking an essential part of their toolkit. After all, why pour money into advertising if you can’t properly see how effective it is and optimize it? However, there are many businesses who are not using conversion tracking or importing goals from Google Analytics into AdWords. Google says they have a new feature just for them.
The new Smart Goals are powered by Google Analytics and aim to help businesses without a way to measure conversions evaluate their advertising efforts and optimize their campaigns.
Unlike conversion tracking and Analytics goals, Smart Goals don’t measure actions taken directly on an advertiser’s website. Instead, it uses the anonymized conversion data collected from other websites by Google Analytics to identify visits “most likely” to convert based on Google’s estimate.
To generate Smart Goals, we apply machine learning across thousands of websites that use Google Analytics and have opted in to share anonymized conversion data. From this information, we can distill dozens of key factors that correlate with likelihood to convert: things like session duration, pages per session, location, device and browser. We can then apply these key factors to any website. The easiest way to think about Smart Goals is that they reflect your website visits that our model indicates are most likely to lead to conversions.
To set up Smart Goals, advertisers will need to link their Analytics and AdWords accounts and must receive at least 1,000 clicks rom AdWords over a 30-day period “to ensure the validity of your data.” From there, select Smart Goals, under Goals in the Admin tab.
Advertisers can even preview well Smart Goals can work for their site before activating it by exploring the new “Smart Goals” page under Conversions in Analytics. This page lets you analyze the behavior of Smart Goals visits and compare those to the visits deemed unlikely to convert. If you like what you are seeing, you can then import Smart Goals into AdWords.
Once Smart Goals have been imported, advertisers can set a target cost per acquisition (CPA) with the Smart Goals being the acquisition. The announcement says, “in this way, you’re able to optimize your AdWords spend based on the likelihood of conversion as determined by our model.”
Google says Smart Goals will be rolling out over the next few weeks. While it may serve as a reasonable solution for some businesses, for most Smart Goals may seem like a bit of a stop-gap solution. To really take control of your online advertising and guarantee you are getting your money’s worth, you will want to use conversion tracking,
If you need help getting started, contact us. We can get you set up and help you optimize your advertising to ensure the best results.
2015 is coming to a close, and Google has begun their end-of-the-year celebrations by highlighting the most popular videos of the year. The past year has been an especially big one for YouTube, which has been celebrating its 10th birthday all year long.
It has also been the first year that YouTube has seen true competition. Facebook’s video platform has given the service a run for its money, by giving videos a wider platform and more prominent place in news feeds.
Despite this challenge, YouTube continues to be one of the largest platforms in the world, and is still synonymous with internet video. The past year, the service has helped drive a dance craze that swept the nation, become the new home of Super Bowl ads, and helped promote equality with these videos:
To help reminisce about 2015, YouTube also gathered over 150 YouTube creators for the latest installation of YouTube’s annual Rewind video, showcasing everything from dance prodigies, TV personalities, and even an insane plastic ball fight.
YouTube is certain to be a huge part of all of our lives for the years to come and these videos show the wide variety of videos you can find across the site. If you have a video you want seen in 2016, especially business related videos, YouTube is the place to look.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2015-12-09 14:59:192015-12-09 14:59:19Google Celebrates 2015 With The Top YouTube Videos of The Year
Since launching in spring, Google AdWords’ structured snippet extensions have shown themselves to be a powerful tool in the AdWords arsenal.
Structured snippets add an extra line of information with your text ads which specifically highlight important information for searchers. When implemented well, this can boost click-through rates for ads.
Now, Google has made these structured snippets even more visible in the search results by doubling the amount of information that can accompany text ads.
To do this, advertisers can select two predefined “Headers” which act as structured snippets. Then, those headers can be customized with two unique sets of values. Depending on the search results, these snippets have the potential to be displayed at the same time.
Google does say that each structured snippet extension is treated as its own ad auction, and like other ad extensions, may not always appear together.
You can boost the chances of having both extensions display at the same time by being thorough and providing as much information as you can. With more information, the ad auction is better able to select the highest quality combination of extensions. Not only does this improve your chances of having both snippets show at the same time, it also increases your overall ad performance.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2015-12-08 12:16:572015-12-08 12:16:57AdWords Doubles Amount of Info In Stuctured Snippets
While apps have become the hottest trend for smartphones, the market for apps can be incredibly competitive and hard to break through. Mobile users have limited space on their phone for apps, so they can be hesitant to try out new apps, especially if they are new or relatively-unknown. Even when users do download apps, they often only use it once and forget about it.
Now, Google has launched a new service to let users try out any app they want without having to use up their precious hard drive space. The company has launched a new streaming mobile ad feature that allows users to access a short 60-second or less version of the app that responds just like the full app.
Sissie Hsiao, Google’s head of product for mobile ads, says the goals of this new feature is to help app developers connect with the right users. In a statement to TechCrunch, she explained:
“You can buy ads, you can get apps installed. But a lot of apps are used once or they’re never used, even after they’re installed. We found that 1 in 4 apps is never even used, and there’s often this ‘try once’ experience, and then [the app is] never used again.”
The new streaming mobile ads, called “Trial Runs” allow users to try the app without downloading, which will hopefully help limit the number of “one and done” app downloads. Instead, it will motivate developers to focus on targeting a more refined audience who will be more likely to gully engage with the app.
The new feature is currently available to a limited number of testers, with no word of when to expect a full rollout.
As the premiere of Star Wars: The Force Awakens grows closer, Google is getting in on the excitement. The company recently announced its new #ChooseYourSide campaign, and indicated it was planning a number of Star Wars Easter eggs ahead of the film’s release on December 18.
Well, you don’t have to wait for the Easter eggs to start popping up. The first surprise for Star Wars fans who use Chrome has already been found.
Just Google the famous first line from the original 1977 Star Wars movie (“a long time ago in a galaxy far far away”), and you will be treated to a page in the style of the series iconic opening crawl. Instead of an summary of intergalactic politics and jedi-related events however, the scrawl shows search results over a Star Wars-themed background.
You can find out more about the #ChooseYourSide campaign over at Marketing Land. Fans will have to keep waiting for the film’s release, but keep your eyes peeled for more exciting Easter eggs in the meantime.
