Ayaz Nanji says, “Google’s search engine is displaying fewer organic results on it first page this year than it was last year, and it’s increasingly presenting different experiences for desktop and smartphone users, according to recent research from Searchmetrics. The report was based on 2016 data from 500,000 general, frequently searched keywords. The researchers examined the first Google search results page for each term and analyzed how 11 features (text results, product listing ads, images, news, maps, etc.) were integrated. Whereas Google used to almost always display 10... [...]

Patricio Robles says, “If you needed any more evidence that mobile has taken over the world, you got it last week when news broke that Google is going to be creating a dedicated mobile index. Here’s what you need to know about it. It’s coming in a few months According to Google’s Gary Illyes, the new mobile index will be launched within “months.” So it’s right around the corner. It will be made the primary index Perhaps the most important aspect of Google’s announcement is that the new mobile index will be made the primary index. The decision isn’t... [...]

Tony Edward says, “Google has been testing a new content platform called “Posts with Google,” and it could have a huge impact on brand searches, for both paid and organic. We all know that Google has had its struggles with trying to develop its own social network; Google Buzz is dead, and Google Plus seems to be on its way out. This new platform seems to have some social elements to it, though it is very different from a social network. On the official site for this platform, Google states the following: Every day millions of people search on Google, many of whom are looking for information... [...]

Barry Schwartz says, “Every year we like to get a Googler who is close with the ranking and search quality team to give us future thinking points to relay to the search marketing community. In part two of our interview with Gary Illyes of Google, we asked him that question. After a little bit of coercion, Illyes told us three things: (1) Machine learning (2) AMP (3) Structured data He said: Well I guess you can guess that we are going to focus more and more on machine learning. Pretty much everywhere in search. But it will not take over the core algorithm. So that’s one thing. The other... [...]

Barry Schwartz says, “Google is going to create a separate mobile index within months, one that will be the main or “primary” index that the search engine uses to respond to queries. A separate desktop index will be maintained, one that will not be as up-to-date as the mobile index. The news came today during a keynote address from Gary Illyes, a webmaster trends analyst with Google, at Pubcon. Illyes didn’t give a timeline in his talk, but in a follow-up with Search Engine Land, he confirmed that it would happen within “months.” Google first announced that it was experimenting... [...]

Andy Taylor says, “At the recent SMX East conference in New York City, Google’s Jerry Dischler announced a number of paid search updates that should roll out in the near to immediate future. Among them, two in particular stand to expand the footprint of Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA). Here are the changes you need to know about, starting with the most impactful. RLSA membership duration expanded to 540 days Since beta testing all the way back in 2012, RLSA has been restricted to include only those users who visited an advertiser’s website within the past 180 days. This meant... [...]

Christi Olson says, “Attribution is the science behind assigning values to individual touch points throughout a customer’s decision journey. It’s not only a key driver in how we currently optimize marketing campaigns, but attribution is also used for media mix modeling and developing media budgets. Herein lies the problem: marketers tend to look at attribution within our own channel silo, so it’s not easy to understand the full picture of a multi-channel environment. As search continues to evolve in form and function, it’s raising some important questions around how we think about... [...]

Brett Middleton says, “Everyone running a PPC account typically has a budgeting question they are trying to figure out. For those with a tighter ad budget, the question becomes, “How do I get the most leads for this limited amount of spend I have?” Larger accounts run into their own problems; finding points of diminishing returns and making small gains in efficiency while maintaining spend levels at a point that generates the growth you need can be a headache. If you take away one point from this, it’s that search impression share may be the most ignored primary metric for most... [...]

Barry Schwartz says, “Google is going to create a separate mobile index within months, one that will be the main or “primary” index that the search engine uses to respond to queries. A separate desktop index will be maintained, one that will not be as up-to-date as the mobile index. The news came today during a keynote address from Gary Illyes, a webmaster trends analyst with Google, at Pubcon. Illyes didn’t give a timeline in his talk, but in a follow-up with Search Engine Land, he confirmed that it would happen within “months.” Google first announced that it was experimenting... [...]

Barry Schwartz says, “The Google Penguin real time algorithm which started rolling out on September 23, 2016, has now rolled out fully to all of Google’s data centers. The recovery aspect of this new Penguin algorithm started a bit after September 23 — aroundSeptember 28. Now that all data centers have the new code, those sites impacted by previousGoogle Penguin issues should have seen a recovery at some level if they took the necessary steps to clean up their links. As we covered early, Penguin looks at the link source for the most part — so if you still have very spammy links pointing... [...]