Keeping our visitors updated on everything that goes on in the SEO realm why we take the time to do this daily post as we make our our rounds of the web. We hope you find it useful … now here’s what’s happened over the past 24 hours in search and SEO.
CPCs To Rise 26% And Shopping By 41%
iProspect has released their quarterly Paid Search Trends report and Ginny Marvin over at Search Engine Land covered it. In the report they discuss the increase in clicks and impressions during the decline in cost-per-click over 2016 and the drop in CTR in Q4 of 2016 compared to 2015. Then came the predictions of rising costs. I can’t put it into the right context in our limited space here but if you’re in PPC you should read the piece.
Google Search Query Refinement
Bill Slawski covered an updated patent titled, “System and method for providing search query refinements” over on the SEO By The Sea blog. Our regular readers will know I’m a bit of a patent junkie but even if you’re not this is an important area to understand if you’re an SEO and well worth the read.
Google Using “Super Profiles”
Matt Southern over at Search Engine Land reported yesterday about an issue Google is facing with the EU. After previously stating they would not collect data from the DoubleClick network to add to user profiles they are now reversing on that giving them access to a wide array of information on user behavior outside of search. Essentially – big brother is watching.
Facebook Changing Trending Topics
Danny Goodwin over at Search Engine Journal wrote about 3 significant changes coming to the trending topics at Facebook. These changes include the algorithms that will select the headlines, a speeding up of the signal detection on trending stories and the elimination of the personalization of trending stories with people in the same geographic location seeing the same stories. This last one comes as a huge surprise and a great move forward to reduce the polarization of information.
Google Bans 200 Sites
In an article by Matt Southern on Search Engine Journal more details are given about the Bad Ads Report and it’s impact. This includes 200 sites that were banned for providing fake news and 5 million payday loan ads are now gone. It’s an interesting piece – I had no idea how significant the impact was.
Google Q4 Earning Report
Today after markets close Google will announce it’s Q4 earnings. Jay Somaney covers his predictions over at Forbes. There is too much data to summarize but let’s just say – he predicts it will be good.
And that was the day in search. As always, if you thinlk we missed any major stories feel free to add them in the comments below.