Week #37 Roundup – Google’s Core Algorithm Update, New Multimedia Ads From Microsoft And Much More
11 min read
Welcome! We have gathered a bunch of exciting and all-important news from the universe of digital marketing. In this Week’s Roundup, we cover changes, updates and trends regarding SEO, PPC, analytics, social media and technology.
Take a look at this week's news below and keep your information up to date.
Google has announced changes to its core algorithm, which means we can expect impacts on rankings. The update was released on 12, September 2022 and it will probably take up to two weeks to complete the deployment.
Core algorithm update means a change to the main Google algorithm. The latest update is hardly a rare change, as Google Search faces multiple updates yearly to improve the experience and the quality of results.
As a result of the update, the traffic of some pages may decrease or increase. Google has given instructions on matters that should be generally paid attention to and thus avoid lower visibility in search results. The key point is to focus on making sure you provide the best possible content, as that is what Google is all about and the basis for reward from the algorithm.
To make sure that your content is top-level, Google has prepared questions you can ask yourself about your content, such as:
However, it is good to remember that a lower ranking in the search results does not necessarily mean that the site needs to be fixed in any way.
Source: Google’s Announcement , What site owners should know about Google's core updates
Continuing the subject of the previous news, Google will cover the latest advances in the search algorithm at its event called 'Search On 22'. The event will take place on September 28 at 10am PT.
As Google states: “Search On is our annual event where we share the latest innovations across our information products. This year, we'll share how we're transforming Search to help you make sense of the world in more natural and intuitive ways.”
We highly recommend participating in the virtual event for those who want to get more detailed information about the new search algorithm update.
Source: Event page of Search On 2022
As Lily Ray noticed, Google is now testing highlighted parts of featured search snippets. Testing has been very active recently with multiple new experiments on search snippets, such as the snippet block containing multiple answers to the same question from different sites.
Google's purpose is to help people find the information they are looking for as conveniently and efficiently as possible. This is why Google constantly tests various features aimed at making searching for information easier, such as attributes related to search snippets.
Source: Tweet of Lily Ray
Microsoft strives to make web search easier and more attractive, and thus Bing more visually engaging. And when Google takes steps forward, so does Microsoft.
📢 Microsoft announced the availability of Multimedia Ads in all markets where Bing is available. Multimedia Ad is a responsive advertising format that utilizes machine learning, where images, headlines and descriptions can be combined to create relevant and impressive visual advertisements. Multimedia ads appear on both the Microsoft Search Network and the Microsoft Audience Network.
These new ads can be shown in mainline and sidebar positions in Bing Search, Yahoo Search, Windows 11, and Microsoft Start.
Get noticed and stand out: A Multimedia Ad helps in attracting the consumer's attention and increasing interest and sales by using extensive visuals to promote the brand, products, or services. In the era of information overload, getting consumers to pay attention to advertisements has become even more challenging. Visually richer ads may therefore be the key to getting noticed.
There is only one Multimedia Ad per page. This is how you make sure that you stand out and get noticed among your competitors.
Increase clicks and save time: Multimedia ads effectively combine headlines, images and descriptions into ads that connect your content to your potential customers' searches, saving you time and increasing clicks and conversions. Ads are shown to the right people at the right time.
More detailed instructions for creating Multimedia Ads can be found here .
Source: Microsoft Advertising Blog
On Tuesday, September 13, 2022, Google launched support for Performance Max campaigns in Google Ads scripts.
📝Performance Max is a new goal-based campaign type from which you can access the whole Google Ads inventory. It's designed to complement keyword-based search campaigns to help you find more converting customers across all Google channels, including YouTube, Display Network, Search, Discover, Gmail and Maps.
📝You can perform common operations like pausing or enabling the campaign, as well as selecting and modifying most asset types in asset groups. However, you cannot modify text assets or create new campaigns or asset groups through scripts. Google said that Performance Max retail campaigns are supported in only a limited fashion, because you cannot manage listing groups through scripts.
📝Performance Max helps you optimize your performance based on your specified conversion goals by combining automation technologies across bidding, budget optimization, audiences, creatives, attribution, and more. What is left for you, is providing important inputs like audience signals (including customer data), high quality text, images, and video.
📝Smart Shopping campaigns created in Merchant Center will be upgraded automatically to Performance Max in 2022.
Read more about Performance Max campaigns here .
Source: Google Ads Developer Blog
On August 23, 2022, Google announced new changes to Merchant Center, which are:
The Merchant Center will no longer have a "primary country of sale" for feeds. Instead, the "target countries" field will now be used to designate the primary and additional countries the feed will be targeted to.
Feed labels are an optional new setting for merchants using the Google Shopping ads platform. Feed labels will allow merchants to group ads by giving them a label of up to 20 characters. Feed labels will allow merchants to create more flexible campaign targeting, for example, feeds using the same language can be given the same label, making it easier to target those feeds in one Shopping campaign. Existing feed labels will automatically be set to the original 'primary country of sale' code, ensuring uninterrupted targeting for existing feeds.
Source: Google Merchant Center Help
❌Google has removed the datePublished property from the fact check structured data documentation which means that date information is no longer part of the Fact Check rich results.
If your website deals with claims and reviews related to a particular issue, you can include ClaimReview structured data on your website. ClaimReview structured data can enable a “fact check summary” to appear in Google search results when someone searches for a claim for which you have the correct answer.
What should be noted is that even if you have added Fact Check structured data to your website, it does not necessarily mean that your claims and reviews will appear in search. There are some guidelines to follow, which can improve your chance to show up in the search results. More about these guidelines and the technical instructions you can find here .
Source: Google Search Central
Google announced that it has added a new HTTPS report to Google Search Console. A new report shows information about which pages don't work over HTTPS and why they aren't shown as HTTPS.
After last year's release of the Page Experience Report in Search Console, which aims to help site owners understand and fix issues that affect how Google evaluates their site's page experience, Google received many requests to learn more about a site's HTTPS status and which pages don't work over HTTPS and why not.
To tackle the aforementioned lack of understanding, Google is gradually rolling out the HTTPS report to Search Console over the next few months.
Source: Google Search Central Blog , Tweet by Google Search Central
Matt Navara tweeted about Meta's new testing on his account on September 7th. This new testing allows users to repost content in their feeds.
On Instagram, users have been able to share other people's posts to stories for a long time, but not when it comes to the feed. The new repost feature possibly increases discoverability and visibility which is great news for businesses.
As Alessandro Paluzzi stated before on Twitter: “Reposts will be saved in a separated tab on your profile”.
Since there is no precise timetable for the wider implementation, we have to stay tuned and wait for the new feature to be available for us all.
Source: Tweet of Matt Navara , Tweet of Alessandro Paluzzi
Meta is now testing the ability to start community chats directly in Messenger and will expand the chat experience to multiple Facebook groups in the coming weeks. Community Chats facilitate more meaningful connections between people in real time around the topics they care about in a variety of formats, including text, audio, and video.
Messenger's community chats allow people to, for example, create a Facebook group, start conversations and audio channels, and invite others to join a new group within the app.
With Community Chats, Facebook Groups and Messenger are seamlessly integrated into the experience to allow people to stay connected whenever, wherever, and however they want. Instead of waiting for people to comment on a post, admins can now start a conversation about a topic.
Instead of navigating multiple topics in a single Messenger group chat, the community chat creator can organize conversations into categories. In this way, group members can easily find the most interesting ones.
If interested, check the guide on how to use Community Chat in a Facebook group .
Source: Messenger News
The Search Insights tool is now being added with more data to make it easier for content producers to identify new trends. These additions are now being tested and based on feedback from content creators, they may be brought to wider distribution.
Creator Insider posted a video about adding 3 new elements to the Search Insights tool. The new additions provide more information about what your audience is interested in and also how those users interact with different topics in the app.
These new analytics options are:
Source: Creator Insider
Apple released its big new iOS 16 software update for iPhones. The new version of the mobile operating system comes with a slew of new features and upgrades that aim to improve the way your iPhone works.
The following are some of the brand-new functions:
Source: Apple iOS 16
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