The Week In Search & SEO: August 18, 2017

The Week In Search & SEO: August 18, 2017

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Google Adds 30 (+1) Languages To Voice
Google has added 30 new languages to voice search pointing out in theire announcement that voice search is typically 3x faster than typing. They are also adding emoji to US English so we can now add emoji to a voice-driven message. Luck us! 🙂

Google Adds Mobile-Friendly Test Shortcut To SERPs
Shortly To Mobile Friendly Test

Want to see if a page is mobile-friendly? It just got even easier. Rather than having to go ALLLLL the way to the test page you can now check right from the search results simply by searching “mobile friendly”.

Google Adds Pollen Level Notifications To Mobile
Google gives allergy sufferers a heads-up on pollen levels via mobile search

Allergy sufferers can now add pollen notifications to their mobile experience giving them a heads up (albeit a stuffy one) on what’s in the air.  And now they’ll know to serve you Benadryl ads. 😉

Google Rolling Our Hands-Free Calling On Google Home

If you’re in the US or Canada you’ll soon be able to make hands-free calls right from your Google Home over VOIP. This is a great feature and perhaps more to the point, a great move by Google and it begins to harness areas they have a huge advantage over Amazon (data) and begin rolling out features Amazon just can’t do as well.

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Google Updates Brand Safety In Display Network
Site category exclusions for Google Display Network getting brand safety update

Ginny Marvin over at Search Engine Land reported on the recent updating of the Google Display Network category exclusion options. This move changes the categories available to exclude from sites your ad may appear on in response to the March advertiser YouTube boycott. If you’re a GDN advertisers this is a must-read.

Bing Ads Labels
Bign has just added labels to their paid search offerings.  In short it allows marketers and advertisers to add labels to campaigns facilitating data comparisons among groups.  For example one can now group branded and non-branded campaigns, campaigns related to specific activities or item types, etc. A good add by Bing.

AdWords Sunsets App-Install Campaigns
App Install campaigns are being put to rest with Universal App Campaigns taking over. Greg Sterling reported on the change for Search Engine Land. The current app-install campaigns will stop running on November 15th so if you have any it’s time to make the switch.

Bing Automating Advertising
Bing announced this week that their Dynamic Search Ads pilot is now open to all advertisers. To setup a Bing ads campaign through this mechanism one need simply enter their URL and some generic ad copy. Bing and AI will take over from there selecting keywords, ad copy and landing pages  essentially creating the campaign for you. This is going to be very interesting.

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Facebook Expands Marketplace Categories
In October of last year Facebook rolled out it’s marketplace (a sport for folks can buy and sell stuff). Well now they’ve added eBay’s daily deals to the offerings on mobile. They’ve also expanded the categories and in his chat with Facebook’s Debbie Liu Greg Sterling that the scope is expanding and new categories coming.

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Alas, nothing in this category this time.

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Optimize Your Q&A
As we mentioned above, Google’s rolled out a Q&A feature in maps.  Local SEO guru Mike Blumenthal (a man who’s likely forgotten more than the rest of us know about local) wrote an 11 point guide to optimizing for it. It’s early in the game so this will mainly be based on experience but he has enough that you should be following it.

Tracking Clicks In A Drop Down
Track Selection In Drop-Down List

A great guide from Simo Ahava. In this week’s #GTMTips Simo takes us through how to track a user’s selection in a list using Google Tag Manager.

404 vs Soft-404
Benj Arriola wrote a good summary for Search Engine Journal on the different between 404s and soft 404s and how to fix each of them.  Worth the read if there’s any confusion.

Ideal Blog Length & Frequency
The Perfect Blog Post Length and Publishing Frequency is B?!!$#÷x - Whiteboard Friday

If you listen to Rand’s latest Whiteboard Friday there’s no such thing as an ideal or frequency. He brings up some good points if you listen tot he actual intent of the piece but don’t think throwing up some 200 word filler once-in-a-blue-moon is going to cut it. Fulfilling user needs is the key.

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