The Week In Search & SEO: June 29, 2018

The Week In Search & SEO: June 29, 2018

After over 17 years, Google announced this week they are doing away with Google Adwords and DoubleClick and rebranding their new Google Ad program. Plus, you can now get verified to manage your knowledge graph on Google. Meanwhile, Bing announced that users can now toggle between different accounts to move money or manage them. There have also been some interesting thought pieces that you will want to take the time to read this week including one on entity-first indexing.

Top Global Search News

Get Verified to Manage Your Presence on Google

Get verified to manage your presence on Google

If your company, nonprofit or team has a Google Knowledge Panel, you can complete the verification process allowing you to suggest changes, images and other data on that page. Learn about the simple process in this blog from Google

Google Search Console Releases URL Inspection Tool

Google Search Console releases URL inspection tool

Google has announced that they are beta testing a new tool in the Google Search Console allowing users to see the date that a particular web page was last crawled, and the results of that crawl including any coding errors. While the tool is available to just a few people right now, it should be rolled out globally in the near future.

Google Tests Hotel Search Filters Using Highlight Icons 

Google has begun using hotel highlight icons on their hotel search filters. While some point out that it does not seem to be the most efficient manner of arriving at desired results, users can now click on choices like “budget options,” “top choices,” and “guests favorites.”

STUDY: How Volatile Are Google’s Featured Snippets? 

STUDY: How Volatile Are Google’s Featured Snippets?

A study from Stone Temple Consulting looking at over 4,999 search queries determined that 1,092 featured snippets on desktop used content from two different domains while on 318 desktop keywords Google pulled content from three different domains. Four-hundred-twenty-five keywords never showed a featured snippet on desktops while 888 keywords never showed a featured snippet on mobile devices over a 124-day testing period. Ten domains accounted for over 47 percent of featured snippets on desktop and 41 percent on mobile devices with Wikipedia getting the most featured snippets (SURPRISE!)

Google My Business Launches Subjective Attributes In Insights 

Google My Business Launches Subjective Attributes In Insights

Google has quietly launched subjective attributes on their Insights pages. While this may only apply to the hospitality industry, users can find out things like if a restaurant is popular with locals based on user’s opinions.

Google May Ignore Keyword Stuffing if Content Has Value 

Google’s John Mueller says that keyword stuffing may be ignored if the content has value. He also pointed out that it is usually a better move to focus on your own content than what competitors are doing.

Google: We Ignore Most Links Within Press Releases 

Google confirmed again what we all knew – that it ignores most links in press releases, realizing they are placed there by the company themselves. The only time they may pay particular attention to them is that if they are unnaturally inserted.

Google’s New Speed Update Works On Gradual Scale; Small Improvements Matter 

According to Google’s John Mueller, when Google releases their new speed update in July, the update will be on a scale, so even small changes to speed can make a difference on search-engine-result pages.

Top Local Search News

Google Maps Begins Rolling out New Explore Features Announced Last Month 

The new Google Map features announced in May began rolling out worldwide on June 26, 2018.

Google Shows Dynamic Filters On Local Pack Results 

Google Shows Dynamic Filters On Local Pack Results

Google has started showing dynamic filters based on the user’s search inquiry recently on Local Packs. The company also recently started showing dynamic business categories on listings.

Top PPC News

Bing Ads App Gets Multi-user Access To Toggle Between Accounts & Ability To Add Funds 

Bing Ads app gets multi-user access to toggle between accounts & ability to add funds

On June 21, 2018, Bing Ads introduced updates to their iOS and Android apps giving users the ability to switch between accounts and add funds without having to get to a computer. If you have not visited the app recently, then be sure to check out the Share of Voice part of the app as it may hold important clues on how your ads can make a bigger impact.

Google is Retiring the AdWords & DoubleClick Brands in a Major Rebranding Aimed at Simplification 

Google is retiring the AdWords & DoubleClick brands in a major rebranding aimed at simplification

While Google AdWords has been around for 18 years and DoubleClick has been around for 22 years, Google announced on June 27, 2018, that these entities would be no more. Instead, Google AdWords will now be called Google Ads and DoubleClick for advertisers along with Google Analytics 360 will become known as the Google Marketing Platform. Finally, DoubleClick for Publishers and DoubleClick Ad Exchanges will become part of Google Ad Manager.

Google Introduces Smart Campaigns for Small Businesses

Google introduces Smart Campaigns for small businesses — the first new solution to launch under the Google Ads brand

Google announced that they will be rolling out Smart Campaigns this week in the United States and will have them rolled out worldwide by the end of the year. The initial offering allows small businesses to use Google’s machine learning algorithms to set up ads that Google will target to select audiences. Soon, businesses will be able to use Google’s Image Picker to select up to three images to accompany their ads. The program also hopes to create landing pages for small businesses in the near future.

Top Social Media News

Oddly there wasn’t any key news in this category this week.  If you think we missed something please feel free to add it in the comments below.

Internet Marketing-Related Tech

There wasn’t any key news in this category this week.  If you think we missed something please feel free to add it in the comments below.

Best Opinion Pieces

Deep Dive Into Entity-First Indexing 

Part 3 of 5 of The Entity & Language Series: Translation and Language APIs Impact on Search has been released by D Nyagolova & Cindy Krum.

The Entity & Language Series: Translation and Language APIs Impact on Search (3 of 5)

With a rise in the number of voice searches being conducted, Google is transitioning from keyword indexing to entity indexing to provide users with more relevant results. In order to understand how languages factor into voice search, one must have a basic understanding of Google Translate API that powers Google’s powerful translation software that translates words as phrases and Google Cloud Natural Language API that relies on Machine Learning and AI, to provide the meaning behind the words spoken without translating them. Further, Google seems to place a large emphasis on what language the search query is made in to return the best results.