AdWords Updates The Opportunities Tab With New Opportunity Types

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The Opportunities Tab in AdWords is getting a face-lift. It was relaunched today with several new types of features combined and displayed in one view. The tool was originally launched in 2009, intended to be “your personal AdWords assistant, surfacing insights to help you improve your performance.”

The new types give advertisers more ways to improve their performance by showing them where they should invest their energies. For example, campaign suggestions include where to add sitelinks and where to raise bids to show your ads more often than your competitors. Google even gives you suggestions for breaking out ad groups to display more relevant ads, and highlights when bids can be safely lowered to stay within your budget without losing clicks.

The opportunities tab is based on an account’s performance from the last seven days, and Google says they will be adding more opportunities to the tab in the future.

The Opportunities Tab

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Matt Cutts Weighs In On How To Use Links In Comments and Not Look Spammy

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matt-cutts

Google’s Matt Cutts

With the big crackdown on spammy link building practices over the past two years at Google, there are still many webmasters left with questions about what exactly constitutes a spammy practice. Google has previously advised against using links in forum “signatures” as a means of link building, but what about using a link in a comment when it is topically relevant and contributes to the conversation? That is exactly the question Matt Cutts answered in a Webmaster Chat video on Wednesday.

The short answer is that using links to your site in your comments is fine the majority of the time. Everyone who actually contributes to forums has a habit of linking to relevant information, and that often includes their own blogs. But, like everything, it can be abused.

Matt gave some tips to ensure your comments don’t get flagged as spammy by Google or the sites you are commenting on.

  • If you can, use your real name when commenting. Using a company name or anchor text you want to rank for gives the appearance of commenting for commercial marketing purposes, which raises the spam alarm.
  • If you are using leaving links in blog post comments as your primary means for linkbuilding and the majority of your links come from blog comments, Google will probably flag you.

You can see the video below.

 

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Google Adds Click-to-Call to Estimated Total Conversions

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Click-to-Call Ads

Source: Search Engine Watch

Google announced advertisers will find that phone calls from mobile click-to-call ads are now listed in the regular Conversion columns of AdWords, as of Tuesday. This is one of the first steps since Google made their October 1st statement that they would make it easier for advertisers to optimize their bidding strategy for click to call. They are working to make phone calls an important conversion type within AdWords.

With the new update calls made by customers from an AdWords ad, for both mobile and desktop searchers, will be reported in a new column within Estimated Total Conversions.

Before now, click-to-call ads were found under a “Phone Call Conversions” column, but now advertisers will be able to integrate many free automated bidding tools from AdWords to optimize their bidding campaigns and improve performance.

This is a great move for advertisers as 70 percent of mobile searchers call businesses directly from the search results. Google estimates over 40 million phone calls are made every month from Google search ads to advertisers.

At the moment, the new click-to-call conversions are available in countries where Google has forwarding numbers available. This includes the U.S., UK, Germany, and France.

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Google Offers Short Site Reviews This Monday

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Google Hangouts IconThis Monday, site owners looking for advice will have the opportunity to have their website briefly reviewed by Google, as John Mueller announced on Google+. The short site reviews will be taking place November 18th at 10am EDT and will last one-hour. Search Engine Land suggests the event will be lead by Mueller, though no one is quite sure the format this event will be in.

To have your site reviewed, you have to add the site to this Google Moderator page. Then, if Google has the time and chooses your site, it will be reviewed live this upcoming Monday via Google+ Hangouts.

You can also RSVP for the event by going to this page and add it to your calendar.
John’s statement explained the event, saying:

For this hangout, we’ll review sites that are submitted via the moderator page and give a short comment on where you might want to focus your efforts, assuming there are any issues from Google’s point of view :).

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Google Rolls Out New Card Layout For Local Listings

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A few weeks ago, select Firefox users noticed a new “card” layout in the About page for local listings. Beginning Tuesday, it appears the layout has begun to roll out world wide. Mike Blumenthal explained the new layout, saying:

The big difference is that the page now can be displayed in either a single, two or three column layouts depending on browser window width as opposed to the current fixed two column display. Reviews will now follow the same columnar structure as the rest of the page and will not be limited to a current one column display. While this view is not yet visible in mobile, one assumes that if the view were to become universal it would likely push to mobile as well.

The page adds three iconic based calls to action near the top; review, directions & photos. The review summary has been moved up the page and photos have been moved down the page. Geo information including street address, category, hours, description and map are now consolidated into a single card near the top titled “Contact Information. “Similar Places” from around the web no longer show and “reviews from around the web” have been moved up the page to be nearer the top.

But, with the change has come an issue with reviews, at least temporarily. As of Tuesday, the number of reviews listed in the information for local businesses has dropped or begun to show wildly inaccurate review counts. It is unclear whether the actual reviews have disappeared or whether the counts are the only aspect to be affected, but users are reporting as much as a 30 review count drop. It is safe to assume the issue will be resolved quickly as the new layout is ironed out.

You can see the new layout below:

New Local Layout

Source: Mike Blumenthal

 

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Widespread Reports of CTR Dropping in Google AdSense

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Google AdSenseIt seems something odd is happening over at Google AdSense. While there is always a pretty much constant stream of complaints coming in about drops in CTRs (click through rates), they are usually isolated cases. Most often, an individual is simply experiencing a problem and their issues are easily resolved.

But, over the past week there has been an unusually large number of people complaining at both the Google AdSense Help and WebmasterWorld forums that their CTR have declined significantly in the past weeks. As Barry Schwartz noticed, not only is the number of threads enough to raise an eye, but there are some who are saying this is having a big impact on their earnings. Clearly something is afoot.

Some quotes from commenters include:

My blog traffic still increasing but adsense earnings dropped from three days. I have a message from adsense help as “Your earnings were 76% below our forecast”.

and

At the risk of getting screamed at for asking this question (yet again). My ctr went down the last 3 days (Sunday,Monday, Today) a whopping 75%!

Not everyone is experiencing the drop in CTR (Schwartz himself has seen an increase), but this appears to be a widespread enough issue to cause some alarm. The world isn’t ending, but you should probably check out your own CTR to make sure everything is alright.

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New Type of Manual Action Appears in Webmaster Tools

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Google-Webmaster-Tools-LogoThere’s a new manual action showing up in Google Webmaster Tools, according to Jessica Lee from Search Engine Watch. Webmaster Tools was updated over the summer so that site owners could be notified when a specific type of manual action had been taken against the site, and since then the waters have been fairly quiet. This new type of manual action, referred to as “image mismatch” is the first change we’ve seen since then.

Google says:

If you see this message on the Manual Actions page, it means that some of your site’s images may be displaying differently on Google’s search results pages than they are when viewed on your site.

As a result, Google has applied a manual action to the affected portions of your site, which will affect how your site’s images are displayed in Google. Actions that affect your whole site are listed under Site-wide matches. Actions that affect only part of your site are listed under Partial matches.

If you end up receiving that message, it is up to you to ensure that your site is showing the same images to users both on your site and within Google image search results. It is possible “anti-hotlinking” tools can cause the issue, so you may have to look through your site’s code on the server.

As with all manual penalties, once the problem is fixed you have to submit your site for reconsideration and wait. And wait. And wait. Eventually, after you’ve waited for what seems like forever, you’ll get a message in your Webmaster Tools account informing whether the manual action will be revoked after review.

Manual actions are penalties at real, living Google employees have placed against your site after determining that you are violating Google’s guidelines. The majority of manual penalties have related to outright spammy practices such as user-generated spam, hidden text, and unnatural links.

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Google Shuts Down AdWords Offer Extensions

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rip-offersAfter an underwhelming debut in February, it appears AdWords Offer Extensions is being sent to the grave in favor of Google Offers. Ginny Marvin explains that AdWords Offer Extensions was intended to allow advertisers to dedicate extra real estate in their search ads to promoting in-store coupons and discounts. There was little excitement surrounding the announcement, and a new alert informs users that Offer Extensions was sent to the chopping block on November 1st.

The alert was posted on the support page for Offer Extensions. It reads:

Starting on November 1, 2013, we will no longer support offer extensions in AdWords. On that date, offer extensions will stop showing in your ads and offer extensions reporting will stop showing in your account. No action is required.

We recommend reviewing your campaigns to ensure your messaging continues to fit your goals. To retain offer extensions reporting for your records, remember to download campaign reports before November 1. Consider using sitelinks or Google offers to promote your deals and offers in the future.

On the other hand, on October 24, Google announced an updated self-service tool that allowed US businesses to create Google Offers. This way, consumers can use their smartphones to redeem and save coupons and promotions. These offers are distributed through Google Maps, Google+, Google Wallet, and the Google Offers app and website. It appears Google is putting their investments into turning Google Offers into a success, rather than trying to force AdWords Offer Extensions to catch on.

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Android App Content Begins to Be Indexed By Google

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Android

Source: Google

Smartphones have revolutionized how we browse the web, but most browsing still happens within the same web browsers we have all grown accustomed to. For the most part, we do our searches and actual browsing from Chrome, Safari, or Firefox, while we limit our apps to games, reading the news, or taking care of business. But, that all could change in the near future.

Google announced late last week that they would begin allowing Android app developers to have their app content indexed. That content will then be able to be opened directly through apps on Android devices. It is a large step towards a more seamless user experience on smartphones and tablets, rather than the disjointed experience we currently enjoy.

Googlebot has been improved to be able to index the content of apps, either through a sitemap file or through Google’s Webmaster Tools, though the feature is currently only in the testing phase. This means the indexing is only currently available to a small selection of developers, and signed-in users won’t begin to see the app content in their result for a few weeks.

The update means that searches will be able to return information from app content, which will then open directly in the intended app. For websites which tend to offer the same content on both their website and their app, such as news sites, it means users will be able to pick their desired experience, whether it be from within the browser or within the app.

Jennifer Slegg reports that app developers can sign up to let Google know they are interested in having their apps indexed by filling out an application of interest. Before you do though, you should know that your app must have deep linking enabled, and you will have to provide Google with information about alternate URLs either within their sitemap or in a link element within the pages of their site.

Indexing is only available for Android apps currently, and Google has yet to comment on when or if they will extend the capability to iPhone or Windows apps.

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Avoid These Two Mistakes Which Keep Google From Indexing Your Site

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No matter how bad of shape your website is in, Google will crawl it. Google crawls and indexes seemingly the entire internet. Though we know they may not look as deep into low-quality websites, that doesn’t mean they haven’t at least crawled and indexed the landing page. It takes something truly special to keep Google from crawling and indexing a page, but there are two common mistakes that can actually manage to keep Google away.

Technical SEO is one of the most difficult aspects of optimization to grasp, but if you are making these two simple mistakes, it can keep search engines, especially Google, from correctly indexing your websites. If your site isn’t getting correctly indexed, you have absolutely no chance of ranking well. Until you fix the problem your site is going to be severely crippled, so it is imperative you aren’t ignoring these issues.

1. The 301 Redirects on Your Website are Broken

It is a commonly accepted practice to use 301 redirects after a website redesign. As Free-SEO-News mentioned in their latest newsletter, using these redirects properly allows you to retain the ranking equity you’ve built with your website, rather than having to start again from the bottom.

The problem is when these 301 redirects aren’t implemented properly. Even worse, sometimes properly working redirects can suddenly falter, so you can’t place your faith in the redirects working correctly forever. Code changes, new plugins, or broken databases can cause your working 301’s to begin linking to non-existing pages.

Broken links are an automatic wrecking ball to all your efforts building a solid link portfolio. The best way to ensure that all your links are working is to download a website audit tool, such as SEOprofiler, which automatically checks all of your links and redirects. If your links or redirects suddenly stop working, you will be warned before you start getting punished by the search engines.

2. Rel=canonical Attributes Are Causing Problems

Just as with 301 redirects, the rel=canonical attribute serves a legitimate purpose when used correctly. The attribute can help you avoid problems with duplicate content, but those using the tag without knowing what they are doing can find themselves with some major issues.

Two of the biggest faux pas that we see regularly committed by site owners are to add a rel=canonical attribute which points to the index page to all web pages or to other pages that use the ‘noindex’ attribute. In both scenarios, Google won’t index the web pages at all.

The best advise is to simply stay away from the rel=canonical attribute unless you are absolutely sure what you’re doing. The only proper time to use the attribute is on duplicate pages, and anywhere else will result in significant problems. The problems that can come from using the attribute incorrectly are much worse than those you might see by failing to use the tag on duplicate pages.

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