Google has been working hard to expand their reviews and ratings systems, and yesterday they made a big step by announcing that they will be introducing product ratings for Product Listing Ads (PLAs).
Product reviews provide critical information to shoppers making purchase decisions. To help shoppers easily find this information when searching for products, we’re introducing product ratings on Product Listing Ads.
Shoppers browsing on Google will see the typical product listings they have become accustomed to, but beneath the listings product ratings will also be shown in the shape of stars and review counts. For now it appears the changes will only be seen on search results within the United States.
The data used for these review listings will be gathered from multiple sources, such as merchants, third party aggregators, and editorial sites.
If reviews for businesses are any indication of what this change will bring, it seems very likely that businesses offering products with largely positive reviews will be able to leverage the updated listings to not only increase their click-through rates, but to also increase conversions overall.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2014-07-30 13:18:502014-07-30 13:18:50Google’s New Product Ratings Could Mean Big Things For Online Retailers
A few weeks ago Google finally got around to releasing the iOS version of Google Analytics. The app had been available for Android for quite some time, but the release to iOS makes website data available to webmasters at any time and it is fair to assume some business owners and webmasters may be trying to use Google Analytics for their first time.
While Analytics is without a doubt one of the most powerful tools for analyzing your website and how others are accessing it, it can also be a bit overwhelming for those who aren’t familiar with the layout and aren’t well versed in the terminology.
To help familiarize new and inexperienced webmasters with Google Analytics, Emma Barnes, who offers training on Google Analytics from Branded3, reviewed many of the most common questions she receieves and the terminology you can expect to run into when using Analytics.
Once those questions are out of the way, you may find yourself tasked with another question: “just what am I supposed to do with all this information?” For that, you may want to browse the recent article titled “11 Things You Should Be Doing With Google Analytics” from Search Engine Journal.
If you want to be in control of your website, you need all the information possible to make the right choices. Google Analytics can give you the numbers you want, but these resources will help you know what to do with it.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2014-07-29 13:13:552014-07-29 13:13:55Everything You Want to Know About Google Analytics After The iOS App Release
Last night Google breathed new life into a forgotten algorithm by updating their local search algorithm to provide more useful, relevant, and accurate local search results that are more closely linked to traditional web search ranking signals.
While Google has remained mum on a large amount of the details, we do know the changes can be visible within Google Maps search results as well as traditional search results. From the online discussion, it also local businesses are also getting significant ranking and traffic boosts as most responses have been positive.
Most of the changes are behind the scenes, which Google doesn’t want to share with the world. However, Barry Schwartz shared that the new algorithm ties deeper into web search than previously by linking it to search features such as Knowledge Graph, spelling correction, synonyms, and more.
Google also says the new algorithm improves their distance and location ranking parameters.
The algorithm is already rolling out for US English results, but Google wouldn’t say when to expect it to roll out for other regions and languages, nor would they comment on what percent of queries have been effected or if web spam algorithms were included in the update.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2014-07-25 14:34:272014-07-25 14:34:27Google Rolls Out New Local Search Algorithm
As a business owner with an eye on your company’s online marketing success, you have likely heard about Google’s search engine algorithms. You may even have a general idea of how they function and effect your business’s online presence and marketing strategies.
But, unless you spend your free time reading all the SEO blogs, you probably have some questions about some aspects of how these algorithms work. If your business does international business, one of those questions is very likely if Google’s algorithms work the same around the world.
While the algorithms largely tackle the same issues, the short answer is that they do not all work the same on an international scale.
As Barry Schwartz recently highlighted, you can find specific examples of when algorithms vary across borders by looking at the Google Panda algorithm. The algorithm was initially launched for English language Google engines in February 2011, but the rest of the globe didn’t see the algorithm roll out for quite some time. Notably, it took 17 months for Google to release Panda in Korea and Japan to target Asian languages.
However, the Google Penguin algorithm didn’t have nearly the same delay. Penguin rolled out globally and impacted sites in any language.
What’s the reason for the difference? It all boils down to purpose. The Panda algorithm focused on language and content, and those algorithms have to be customized and focused based on the wide variety of languages found around the world. Meanwhile, algorithms like Penguin target off-page technical factors like links, which raises less of an issue customization.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2014-07-24 13:15:442014-07-24 13:15:44Do Google’s Algorithms Work The Same Around The World?
Duplicate content has been an important topic for webmasters for years. It should be absolutely no secret by now that duplicate content is generally dangerous to a site and usually offers no value, but there are occasional reasons for duplicate content to exist.
Of course, there are very real risks with hosting a significant amount of duplicate content, but often the fear is larger than the actual risk of penalties – so long as you aren’t taking advantage and purposely posting excessive duplicate content.
Google’s John Mueller puts the risk of using duplicate content in the best context,. According to John, there are two real issues with duplicate content.
The first issue is that Google’s algorithms typically automatically choose one URL to show for specific content in search, and sometimes you don’t get to choose. The only way you can effectively let Google know your preference is by using redirects or canonical tags, and that isn’t foolproof.
Secondly, if you are hosted a ton of duplicate content it can actually make the process of crawling to overwhelming for the server, which will slow new content from being noticed as quickly as it should be.
Still, John said that in most cases, “reasonable amounts of duplication […] with a strong server” is not a huge problem, as “most users won’t notice the choice of URL and crawling can still be sufficient.”
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2014-07-21 14:07:152014-07-21 14:07:15Why Is Duplicate Content a Problem?
It’s been a long time coming, but starting yesterday you can download the official Google Analytics app for iPhone and iPod Touch. The Android version of the app has been available for quite a while, but naturally there was a delay before Google pushed it out to Apple devices.
While the app can run on the majority of Apple mobile devices, it is optimized for the iPhone 5 and requires a device running iOS 6.0 or later.
There aren’t a bunch of new features, but the app opens the opportunity for webmasters to keep up to date with Analytics on the go. You’ll find features such as sources, page views, visits, and TechCrunch says users will even have access to Real Time reports, which will allow you to monitor data as it occurs.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2014-07-18 14:23:582014-07-18 14:23:58Google Analytics Comes to iOS
Google Analytics is easily one of the most trusted analytics platforms out there, but new findings are suggesting it may not be as accurate as once thought. Most recently, Groupon published a study which indicates that as much as 60% of what Google Analytics calls “direct traffic” is actually from organic search.
The study was conducted by Groupon’s Director of Product Management, who manages their organic search. While not entirely scientific, his study involved completely deindexing Groupon from Google for 6 hours.
Deindexing means absolutely no traffic would be coming from Google for the duration of the study, which allowed the study to calculate roughly what percent of traffic is coming from organic search.
During the six hours the site was deindexed, Groupon’s direct visits dropped by 60%, which led Groupon to believe that 60% of what is called direct traffic is actually coming from organic search traffic.
Groupon isn’t the only site to conduct a study like this. Not long ago, Conductor, a well-respected internet marketing firm, released a similar study which led them to the conclusion that 47% of traffic came from organic search. Nearly a third of that was attributed to direct visits.
Conductor Corroborates Groupon’s Findings
After Groupon released their findings, Conductor decided to revisit their initial study to see what would happen to the results if included the conclusions from Groupon’s study into their own data.
By taking 60% of visits originally attributed to ‘direct’ and reallocating them to ‘organic search’, organic search went from 47% of all visits to 64%. Direct visits dropped from 29% of visits to 12%. This significant discrepancy—17% separates the ‘before’ and ‘after’ allocations should be enough to give marketers pause—and question the assumptions on which their digital strategy lies.
While none of this means you should give up on Google Analytics (it is the best insight you have to website performance and how Google views your site), it does suggest that it is entirely possible that a much larger percentage of traffic is coming from organic search than previously thought.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2014-07-16 12:19:542014-07-16 12:19:54Recent Studies Suggest Organic Search Is Responsible For More Traffic Than Previously Thought
Adobe Flash and mobile devices go together like oil and water. Since the release of the first iPhone it was clear that Flash, Adobe’s multimedia based web site technology, would not be coming to cell phones any time soon.
Years later, after the release of several generations of smartphones and the release of tablets, and it is even clearer that Flash is all but dead and will never be a part of the modern ‘device agnostic’ approach to web design. Unfortunately many webmasters still use it.
That may not be the case for long, as Google has stepped up their fight against the technology. Google announced that starting today they will be warning mobile searchers when the search engine’s algorithms detect a web site is not supported on the device they are using due to Flash.
Rather than outright omit sites utilizing Flash from the search engine – which would garner heavy criticism – those using smartphones and tablets to search may see a warning that allows the user to attempt to view websites using Flash or to look for alternate search results.
The warning reads “Uses Flash. May not work on your device. Try anyway | Learn more.”
It seems pretty unlikely that many users will choose to press on knowing that the site likely won’t work for them.
In lieu of using Flash, Google highly recommends updating to HTML5 and upgrading sites to support that technology because it works in mobile devices and desktop browsers alike.
Google’s Keita Oda, Software Engineer, and Pierre Far, Webmaster Trends Analyst said, “fortunately, making websites that work on all modern devices is not that hard: websites can use HTML5 since it is universally supported, sometimes exclusively, by all devices.” Google simultaneously launched two new resources to help webmasters make the upgrade:
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2014-07-15 13:19:462014-07-15 13:19:46Google Gives You Another Reason To Not Use Flash With Warnings For Mobile Users
Every week we try to keep you updated with all the SEM news from around the web, but the Google I/O event this week was packed full of so much information there was bound to be some stuff we didn’t get to cover. Today, we’re going to cover all the latest news from I/O and everywhere else. We’ll start with Google, but there is also some interesting Facebook news to discuss near further down.
Android Reaches 1 Billion Active Users Per Month
To open the annual I/O developers conference, Google rattled off an impressive list of statistics, as large tech companies tend to do. Of these statistics, there is one that was noteworthy and shows just how prominent smartphones have become throughout the world.
At last year’s conference, Sundar Pichai told the audience that Android had around 530 million active users per month. Over the past year, that number has almost doubled, surpassing one billion active users every month.
Other interesting stats include:
Android users send 20 billion texts per day.
They take 93 million selfies per day.
Android users take 1.5 trillion steps each day.
They check their phones 100 billion times per day.
Android tablets represent over 60 percent of all tablets shipped.
If you’re wondering what everyone is doing on their phones, you can be assured that it involves apps. comScore released a report this week showing that over half of all digital media time is now spent using apps, though its unclear whether more time is spent on Angry Birds or The Wall Street Journal’s news app.
Google Will Remove Author Images From Search Results
Google is continuing to push an emphasis on authorship authority, but don’t expect to continue seeing author images in your search results for much longer. In the next few days, Google will be stripping the author images and Google+ circle counts from desktop and mobile search results in an attempt to streamline search result appearances. In the announcement on Google+, John Mueller said:
“We’ve been doing lots of work to clean up the visual design of our search results, in particular creating a better mobile experience and a more consistent design across devices,” he wrote. “As a part of this, we’re simplifying the way authorship is shown in mobile and desktop search results, removing the profile photo and circle count.”
Danny Goodwin from Search Engine Watch shared an example showing what the results looked like before (shown above) and what they will look like in the very near future (below).
Google is Testing Their Domain Registry Service
Google has expanded into seemingly every facet of online activity, but up until now they have left domain registration to other service providers. That won’t stay the case for much longer as Google recently announced they will be inviting a limited number of people to test their new service called … wait for it… Google Domains.
As the shockingly creative name suggests, Google Domains will let users search, find, purchase, and transfer the domain or domains best representing their business. The service is still being built, which is part of why you shouldn’t expect for it to come out of testing in the close future. But, the service could potentially make the act of creating a website and establishing a company presence online much more easily understandable for the 55% of businesses that still don’t have websites.
Google My Business Comes To iOS and Android
Google announced Google My Business earlier this month, and on Wednesday the official apps for the service came out on both Android and Apple smartphones. The apps offer a unified interface that will make it easier to manage your brand’s online presence on the go. App features include:
Edit the business listing by changing hours, description, etc.
View managers of the page but not manage them
Post to Google+
Add photos and update cover and profile photos
View local insights and analytics
Change business pages and accounts
Watch Now Now Influences Facebook News Feed Video Rankings
Facebook is constantly working on its News Feed algorithm and the latest update is intended to improve the quality of videos being served to users. The new video ranking takes note of how long users watch a video for and uses this information to influence content ranking. This metric will be combined with other long-standing metrics such as likes, comments, and shares.
In the announcement, Facebook said, “In our early tests, this improvement resulted in more people watching more videos that are relevant to them.” The announcement also noted that twice as many people watch videos on Facebook compared to the numbers from six months ago.
Wait, So Facebook is Still Popular With Teens?
You’ve undoubtedly heard the rumors, studies, and proclamations that Facebook is losing traction with teens like a car driving off a cliff. From what everyone wants to believe, all the young kids are moving to the burgeoning messaging apps to escape the prying eyes of their parents and lame extended family. Even President Obama has commented that kids “don’t use Facebook anymore.”
The problem with all this is, the numbers don’t entirely support that conclusion and two reports from the past week confirm that Facebook is still the most popular social site for the demographic by far.
First, Forrester Research released a report showing that more than 75% of US online youth use Facebook at least once a month. Their survey polled 4,517 internet users between the ages of 12 and 17, and that Facebook has twice as many users as Pinterest, Tumblr, Snapchat, and more than Instagram and WhatsApp combined.
The second study, from college and K-12 education review site, Niche, found similar results from a survey of 7,000 teenage users. Specifically, 87% still use Facebook “occasionally” and 61% use it daily (including the 47% who use it “a few times a day.)
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2014-06-27 12:23:202014-06-27 12:23:20Quick SEM News of the Week – June 27, 2014
At this point, it is undeniable that any business with a website should have some form of mobile optimization, whether that means a responsive website, separate mobile URLs, or dynamic serving. But, many businesses with limited resources are attempting to solve this issue by essentially tacking on mobile optimization as an afterthought.
According to a new report from BrightEdge, 27 percent of sites have some form of errors from improper mobile implementation. Even more so, the report claims that sites with mobile implementation errors can cost websites up to 68 percent of smartphone traffic, an increasingly important segment of traffic.
BrightEdge’s Mobile Share Report examined the various types of mobile solution available and sought to uncover which configurations are the most likely to have some form of errors, as well as how these errors impact issues like rankings and traffic.
Notably, Google has indicated that responsive design, dynamic serving, and separate mobile URLs are all accepted forms of mobile implementation, although they have also deemed responsive websites as their preferred solution. As such, BrightEdge was especially interested in seeing if sites with responsive design was less likely to result in errors or had a better chance of ranking.
Interestingly, according to BrightEdge there was no significant difference between smartphone rankings based on mobile configuration.
“Data from BrightEdge’s Data Cube shows that for a given keyword, on average, a website’s rank for smartphone users varies only slightly based on the type of mobile configuration a website has implemented,” the report said. “So, for example, if a site is ranked No. 3 on a desktop, it would rank 3.5 (on average) on a smartphone device. This data represents the average across billions of keywords studied.”
Notably, the report indicates any difference in rank is likely due to local search results pushing other more universal results down on the SERP.
So, with sites using all mobile solutions ranking relatively even, why would Google endorse responsive design?
Responsive design showed the least chance for mobile errors, especially over using separate mobile URLs. In fact, 72 percent of sites using separate mobile URLs had errors, while responsive design showed a minuscule number of sites with errors. Dynamic serving rested nicely in the middle with a 30-percent error rate.
Some of the most common errors can be seen below:
“For separate mobile URLs, there are a handful of common mistakes made in implementation,” the report said. “BrightEdge research showed that no HTTP Vary header was a common mistake amongst two approaches: dynamic serving (82 percent) and separate mobile URLs (41 percent). And among the separate mobile URL approaches, not having an alternate URL tag was the most common error 61 percent of the time.”
These errors are important because they create a poor user experience, which can push traffic away. Even worse, Google has outright said that sites who don’t provide a good mobile experience may not be able to compete in search results overall.
While sites using the various mobile implementation options correctly are ranking fairly evenly, it is obvious that responsive design is still the safest bet. Any option can work, but you are significantly more likely to avoid errors that could cause you problems by simply choosing the least error-prone option: responsive design.
00Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2014-06-25 14:17:512014-06-25 14:17:51If You Don’t Do Mobile Implementation Right, You Are Probably Losing Traffic
A few weeks ago
That may not be the case for long, as Google has stepped up their fight against the technology. 
