This Week In Search: June 2, 2017

This Week In Search: June 2, 2017

Welcome to the first installment of “This Week In Search”.  Until recently we’ve tried to to an almost-daily post on what’s going on in the world of search and SEO but as it turns out … that takes a lot of time that’s needed for clients and sometimes there just really isn’t all that much interesting going on in a day. And so we’re shifting the focus to a weekly update of the top 5 or 6 stories of each week.  If you want to keep up on the daily news we post the latest news constantly on our Twitter pages.

But now let’s look at the top stories in search and SEO this week …

The battleground of entities and reviews
The battleground of entities & reviews

How do entities and reviews work together to impact your search results? In the latest article over on Search Engine Land by Beanstalk CEO Dave Davies (hey … that’s me) we explore exactly this subject and why understanding it is incredibly important.

Javascript Indexing
A few months ago I had the great (mis)fortune of working on my first ASP to AJAX site conversions as an SEO.  Let me be the first to say, it’s a headache made worse by the lack of clear resources out there.  In his latest post on Moz Will Critchlow covers some of the latest crawling info on Javascript indexing.  You might as well read it now and prep for the day when you have no choice but to understand it.

Google Launches A Beta Buy Button
While there’s been no official announcement yet Inc has reported on a new ‘Buy’ button option appearing in the Merchant Center over at Chez Google.   The feature is in beta at this time and merchants involved can opt to have a “Buy On Google” option appear with their shopping listings.  It currently only appears on Android devices but it’ll likely roll out globally in the near future.  This change illustrates the threat Google views in Amazon and the efforts they’re putting in to get away from being the place people look for information before they buy on Amazon.

A Drop In Price On Google WiFi
Google WiFi

Speaking of Amazon – earlier today Google dropped the price on their 3-pack of Google WiFi over on Amazon.com.  It’s still a fairly hefty $279 but that comes in very affordably as opposed to many of the other options for extending your signal at that grade.

Personal Tab Add To Search Results
Google Personal TabMatt Southern reported for Search Engine Journal on the addition of a new tab on Google mobile and that’s the ‘Personal’ tab.  In this tab you’ll find a lot of information passed on your recent purchases, travel info, etc. Basically – everything they can pull on you from your phone or gMail that they think might be helpful.  A bit frightening but very convenient.

Google Attribution Coming Soon
Over on Search Engine Land Ginny Marvin reported on the recent announcement by Google of Google Attribution. For those who’ve been frustrated with the lack of robust attribution information in Analytics (like me) this is a very exciting announcement.  Basically it seems this tool is designed to help you give credit where it’s due and understand more about your conversion data and where your conversions come from … even if a single one is from many sources.

New Smart Bidding
Maximize conversions with Smart BiddingGoogle has also announced on their blog the additional of a new smart bidding goal … ‘Maximize Conversions’.  Basically selecting this will create an environment wherein your AdWords bids will be adjusted to get the most conversions for your daily budget.

Search Parts Of Images On Bing
Bing Visual Search lets you search specific objects within images

Bing has added a new feature to their Image Toolset that allows users to select parts of images to search and will show similar images to that selection. Clearly they’re playing catchup to Google and Pinterest in this area but they seem to be doing decently well.

Google On How To Get Better Snippets
You may have read today about how Google is dropping DMOZ from it’s snippet sources (which makes sense since DMOZ is dead).  This news comes from a larger post from earlier today on the Google site on how to get better featured snippets.  It’s a handy post with some good info for those who may not know how it’s done.

And those are the top stories of the week.  If you think we missed anything be sure to add them in the comments below.