Local business owners have more incentive than ever to make sure their Google listings are correct. As first reported by Android Police, Google Maps has recently added a feature that tells users to turn around and go home if they are using Google Maps to navigate to a specific place if that location will be closed by the time they are expected to arrive.
The warning reads simply, “your destination may be closed by the time you arrive.”
If you keep up with making sure your local listings are always up-to-date and accurate, this shouldn’t be much of a worry to you, however if your business has incorrect hours listed the new feature could wreak havoc on your store traffic.
With the new feature, having the wrong time listed is almost like forgetting to turn the sign from closed to open at the start of the day.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2015-06-17 16:07:522015-06-17 16:07:52Google Maps Gives Local Businesses Even More Reason To Update Their Business Hours
Most reports have made Mobilegeddon out to be a farce with only a small effect on Google’s search results overall. New analysis from digital agency Koozai, however, suggests small and medium businesses (SMB) felt quite an impact when Google rolled out their mobile friendly algorithm.
According to Koozai’s May survey of 2,000 SMB’s with 50 or fewer employees, nearly half (46%) of all respondents reported experiencing changes in ranking. Of that group, 41 percent also saw a drop in rankings by at least three spots. This may not sound like much, but a drop in just one or two rankings can have huge impacts on traffic.
“The hype that the Google mobile update would cause carnage in the search engine rankings missed the larger picture,” says Ben Norman, chief executive (CEO) of Koozai. “Exaggerating the impact meant that businesses didn’t anticipate that even small changes in their ranking can have a big impact on their organic mobile search results.”
Norman says much of the confusion is due to the idea that a single algorithm is the deciding factor when determining ranking. Google uses over 200 different factors to rank pages on search results pages, but some were led to believe the mobile optimization would be the ultimate deciding factor. On the contrary, 27 percent of businesses in Koozai’s survey reported drops in rankings despite having optimized their sites for mobile.
This leads many business owners to feel like they are being punished after acting on Google’s warnings, which Norman says illustrates how frequently SMBs are poorly educated on SEO and fail to understand e-commerce analytics.
“Many consumers today will research on mobile and then purchase on desktop,” he says. “Many SMBs are missing out on these lead-creation opportunities if they don’t know if their e-commerce sites aren’t giving their potential customers a good experience on mobile.”
Of the businesses involved, 37 percent said they were worried the mobile friendly algorithm update would impact their sales while 44 percent said they were not concerned because the majority of their sales come from desktop shopping. Nearly half said they were unsure about the relationship between devices and could not say whether mobile influenced their desktop sales. In addition, 12 percent did not know whether their sites had been optimized for mobile at all.
There were predictions well before the release of the algorithm that small and medium businesses would be the most likely to be impacted by ‘Mobilegeddon’, but many reviews of the algorithm’s effects failed to consider the disparity in their post-Mobilegeddon analysis.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2015-06-08 16:40:472015-06-08 16:40:47Mobilegeddon Had Greater Impact on Small and Medium Businesses
It might not be a surprise to learn that Amazon dominates the search engine results pages, but you might be surprised by just how much they lead all other major brands.
A recent performance study of 10 leading U.S. brands published by SearchMetrics makes it clear that Amazon has by far the most visibility across Google’s search results on both desktop and mobile.
In the study, SearchMetrics used the top 10 retail sites listed in the National Retail Federation’s list of top 100 retailers and parsed the search results of millions of Google search terms to establish a mobile visibility score along with a desktop visibility score.
To calculate the visibility score, the study evaluated the number of times a brand appears across a keyword set, the brand’s rankings within those search engine results pages, competitiveness of keywords, and the click through rate of those results pages.
Even compared to other major competitors, Amazon is an absolute giant. With the staggering rating of 11,145,359, the online retail company dwarfs Walmart, its closest competitor with a score of 1,816,192. Following Walmart were The Home Depot with 881,538, and Target.com, with a score of 771,839.
The focus of the study was mobile search, as it is most often the first touch point to purchase. However, the analysis also showed the rankings remain the same on desktop.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2015-06-05 13:48:132015-06-05 13:48:13Amazon is The Most Visible Mobile Site In Google Search Results By Far
If you run a local business and haven’t logged into Google My Business in a while you may be at risk of having Google unverify your listings, according to a statement from a Google representative today.
In a post on the Google and Your Business Help Forum, Google’s Jade Wang confirmed the news that the company has been contacting some Google My Business users that it considers to be inactive:
In some cases, we may contact Google My Business users via email to confirm that they are still actively managing a business page. If a user is unresponsive to our attempts to contact him or her and has not logged into Google My Business for a significant length of time, then we may unverify pages in the account. We’re doing this in order to continue to provide users with the best experience when they’re looking for local businesses like yours. If you find that a page in your account has been incorrectly unverified, please contact support to get assistance restoring verification.
The news was first brought to light by Brian Barwig of Integrated Digital Marketing, who posted a message today about a phone conversation he had with a Google support rep who told him that this may happen to accounts which are considered inactive for six months.
Mike Blumenthal has also shared the text of the email Google sends out to warn inactive accounts about being potentially unverified.
To help prevent this, Wang included some advice: “It’s a good idea to keep an eye on the inbox associated with your Google My Business (Locations) account. It’s also a good idea to regularly log into Google My Business (Locations) to confirm that your business information is current and accurate.”
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2015-06-04 16:27:242015-06-04 16:27:24Google To Unverify Inactive Google My Business Listings
Over the past decade, website operators have relied on Google Webmaster Tools for ensuring their sites were being properly displayed and indexed across the search giant, but big changes are on the way. Google is rebranding one of its most popular services to Search Console and there a few new features coming with the new name.
According to Google, the shakeup is the result of user feedback, as only a small portion of users actually identify as “webmasters.” Google is hoping the new name will help bring the service to a wider user base.
“It turns out that the traditional idea of the “webmaster” reflects only some of you. We have all kinds of Webmaster Tools fans: hobbyists, small business owners, SEO experts, marketers, programmers, designers, app developers, and, of course, webmasters as well… So, to make sure that our product includes everyone who cares about Search, we’ve decided to rebrand Google Webmaster Tools as Google Search Console.
The rebranding is coming in the next few weeks, and Google has announced two new features that are expected to roll out about the same time.
With Search Console, users will have access to all the functionality they have come to expect of Webmaster Tools, as well as the ability to see how searchers are accessing your content via Android apps through Google Search within Search Analytics reports and the ability to see your app content through Google’s eyes with an alpha version of Fetch as Google for Apps.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2015-05-22 13:47:452015-05-22 13:47:45Webmaster Tools Is Dead, Welcome to Google Search Console
Earlier this year Google and Twitter announced a deal which promise to bring more tweets to your search results, and that promise is coming true today. Google now includes tweets in a more cohesive and graphical format on mobile devices, including a tweet carousel.
Both Twitter and Google announced the news in blog posts today, including examples of how the feature appears, such as the example below which shows how it looks if you search on #madmen.
You can also scroll through the carousel to see more results.
The placement of the feature isn’t always directly at the top of the page. According to Search Engine Land, the tweet carousel can appear in the middle or even the bottom of the page, as their example for “MacBook Pro” shows:
Tweets don’t show for every search, and it is currently unclear exactly what types of searches include tweet carousels and which don’t. However, Google does say:
It’s a great way to get real-time info when something is happening. And it’s another way for organizations and people on Twitter to reach a global audience at the most relevant moments.
That suggests searches for hastags, topics, prominent figures, or trending events are most likely to include tweets.
Google has included Twitter in its search results in the past, even after their last deal ended. The new agreement simply allows for much deeper integration in the search results.
Currently, the new implementation on the search results is limited to only users in the US, in English, using either their browser in iOS or Android, or on the Google Search App. Twitter has promised further support for desktop and more languages in the near future.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2015-05-19 14:41:252015-05-19 14:41:25Google-Twitter Deal Brings Tweets To Search Results In a Big Way
Google is partnering with six delivery providers across the US to establish a new service that will deliver food to your home, straight from the search results.
“Whether you’re craving deep dish pizza or pad thai, starting today you can order food from some of your favorite restaurants directly from Google search results.”
Thanks to the new service, US residents can simply type in what they want to eat, select the restaurant of their choice, then click “Place an order” without ever leaving the search engine.
From there, simply place your order, choose your preferred delivery service, and complete your order from the website.
Google’s partners in this venture currently include the following companies:
Seamless
GrubHub
Eat24
Delivery.com
BeyondMenu
MyPizza.com
The search engine will potentially add more delivery providers in the future as it expands this service.
In line with this new addition, Google is also allowing users to book appointments and make reservations directly from the SERPs.
Local businesses should be especially interested in the service as there is no complicated opt-in. Just go to your Google My Business dashboard and ensure the feature is turned on.
According to a Google help center article, links to place an order or book an appointment will appear automatically for eligible businesses.
A new study from Google and the University of California, Berkeley and Santa Barbara has found that over 3,000 advertisers have been the victims of ad injection software, including major brands such as Sears, Walmart, Target, and eBay.
Ad injectors have long been a boon for webmasters, as the troublesome and occasionally malicious programs insert unwanted ads into web pages costing publishers in ad revenue and causing advertisers to pay for traffic from ads they never intended to buy.
The study exposes a network of companies that profit from and facilitate these unwanted ads and to show just how widespread the issue is. Google says it has received more than 100,000 complaints from users about ad injectors since just the start of this year.
The ad injectors comes in the form of browser extensions and software applications that infect a user’s browser. Google found more than 50,000 browser extensions and 34,000 software applications that had hijacked user’s browsers to inject ads. In nearly 30 percent cases, the software bundles were “outright malicious”, not only injecting ads but stealing account credentials, hijacking users’ search queries and reporting user activity to third parties for tracking purposes.
Google found the ad injector software being distributed onto users computers by 1,000 affiliate businesses, including known adware browser extensions, Crossrider, Shopper Pro and Netcrawl. These companies aim to spread as many ad injector software downloads as possible in a number of ways, including bundling their applications with popular downloads (who hasn’t fallen victim to the pre-checked box for an add-on during a software download?), blatant malware distribution and extensive social media campaigns. They then collect affiliate fees when users click on injected ads.
The ad injectors get the ads from about 25 ad injection library companies such as Superfish and Jollywallet, which in turn source and target ads from relationships with a handful of ad networks and shopping programs. It’s these libraries that pass on a fraction of the profits to the affiliates.
Google found that 77 percent of all injected ads originated from just one of these three ad networks: Dealtime.com, Pricegrabber.com and Bizrate.com.
This network is massive for even the most sophisticated spam and shady marketing systems. Google used a custom-built ad injection detector on Google sites and found that 5.5 percent of unique IP addresses (representing millions of users) accessed Google sites that had some form of injected ads.
Don’t think your Mac is safe either. Google also saw that 3.4 percent of page views on Apple machines and 5.1 percent on Windows machines showed clear signs of ad injection software.
To combat the problem, Google says it has taken down 192 deceptive Chrome browser extensions from the Chrome Web Store and instituted new user protections to prevent similar extensions from making it into the store in the future.
The full report will be presented later this month at the IEEE Symposium on Security & Privacy, but you can read Google’s announcement of the study results here.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2015-05-08 14:29:252015-05-08 14:29:25Google Blows The Lid Off of Enormous Ad Injection Network
It has been a long time coming, but it has finally happened. Mobile has officially overtaken desktop search, according to a new statement from the company.
Informal reports from Google last year indicated it was all but an inevitability that mobile search queries would officially take the lead this year, and Google finally confirmed the news along with a range of new AdWords and Google Display Network announcements.
The company said “more Google searches take place on mobile devices than on computers in 10 countries including the US and Japan,” however it also declined to elaborate what other countries were involved or how recently this shift happened.
Google did note that mobile queries include mobile browser-based searches, as well as those coming from Google’s mobile search apps.
Google did not include tablets with mobile devices, instead choosing to group searches from tablets with those from desktop devices.
The claims have come under fire from some, who are skeptical in the face of contrary data from outside sources. ComScore previously released a report and graphic comparing the volume of US-based search queries across PC, tablets, and smartphones, which showed only 29 percent of total searches were coming from smartphones and tablets in Q4 2014.
If Google’s data is correct, it would imply either ComScore’s was faulty or mobile search experienced an incredible rise over just a few months. For now, that much is unclear because Google is not commenting on the ComScore data.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2015-05-07 15:30:252015-05-07 15:30:25Google Officially Confirms More Searches Come From Mobile Than Desktop
Google’s mobile-friendly algorithm is completely rolled out, but webpages may still see some small changes in the coming days as the search engine continues to index more pages according to Gary Illyes.
Illyes, a prominent Web Trends Analyst at Google, confirmed the news on Twitter this morning by saying “the algo is rolled out” when Barry Schwartz, News Editor for Search Engine Land, asked him on Twitter “is the Google Mobile algorithm fully rolled out?”
The algorithm is the most talked about shake-up from Google since the implementation of the Penguin and Panda algorithms, but the lion’s share of panic appears to be unwarranted as the majority of webmasters saw little to no changes in the wake of the latest rollout.
While Gary Illyes did confirm the algorithm is fully rolled out, he added one concession:
Not all pages were reindexed yet so they don’t have the new scores. Yet.
Also, there were a load of sites that became MF recently, so the actual number of sites affected decreased considerably.
Even with that caveat, the likelihood of significant changes coming in the next few days is unlikely.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2015-05-01 12:02:052015-05-01 12:02:05Google’s Mobile Friendly Algorithm Is Completely Rolled Out
