LinkedIn Rolls Out Sales Navigator Search & CRM Card Updates

LinkedIn has announced a series of updates to its Sales Navigator platform designed to help users find leads faster and boost efficiency.

The New LinkedIn Sales Navigator Search Experience

The first update comes in the form of better visualization in the Search experience.

When you go to the search toolbar, LinkedIn Sales Navigator will now show all available filters.

Additional options that will show include “Company Headquarters” and “TeamLink connections of”.

When filtering for your target audience, the results will update in real-time. This update makes finding your target audience or accounts easier and less time-consuming.

Sales Navigator & CRM Integration Updates

The second feature enhancement from LinkedIn Sales Navigator is for Advanced Plus users.

Sales Navigator can already link to your CRM system (via Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Salesforce) to manage contacts. LinkedIn has added a new tool to this integration called “At-Risk Opportunities” list.

This feature provides a report of people who have left open opportunities, directly into Sales Navigator.

The benefit of this feature helps you prioritize your efforts during critical times, as well as improve your pipeline quality.

Enhanced CRM cards is another update to the CRM integration. These enhanced CRM cards are added to Account Pages and Contact pages, minimizing the need to toggle between platforms.

The New Homepage Features

The last feature announced by LinkedIn was updates to the new Homepage, which was launched last quarter. The Homepage was a welcome addition to sales teams that shows customized insights for key accounts.

LinkedIn has updated the Alerts Feed, Priority Accounts section, and added a new “Bookmarked Alerts” tab.

With the Priority Accounts section, you are able to upload accounts that are most important to your business. For example, with so many people shuffling companies or professions, you’re able to keep tabs on when employee or headcount growth.

Source: LinkedIn Rolls Out Sales Navigator Search & CRM Card Updates

SparkPost Global Survey reveals 74% of marketing leaders concerned with impending privacy changes

SparkPost, the world’s largest email sending and optimization platform delivering nearly 40% of the world’s email, released its annual email benchmark report, titled Email in 2022: The trends, behaviors, and benchmarks driving email forward. The report closely examines how digital marketers and email marketers have adjusted two years into the pandemic and what digital marketing strategies they’ve leaned on to accelerate growth and connection with key audiences. 

Email in 2022: The trends, behaviors, and benchmarks driving email forward

The marketing leaders survey found that, while businesses are showing a strong rebound from two challenging years, they are very mindful of how privacy can and will affect their future digital marketing success. The good news is most leaders recognize the importance of investing in aligning each marketing discipline, shoring up solid data practices, and bolstering their arsenal of branded content and communications channels.

2021 proved most businesses have recovered economically

Businesses, for the most part, are bouncing back to pre-COVID levels, but marketing leaders are more mindful of where dollars are spent. Last year, only 42% of leaders were optimistic that economic recovery was within reach. Now, 63% report their budgets and priorities reflect pre-COVID levels. They are also investing in building out content and branding, which points to organizations knowing the value of investing in themselves.

Email marketing continues to perform as a trusted channel, delivering against the bottom line

In years past, email marketers have been viewed as siloed parts of the marketing organization, but the tide is turning in a major way. Alignment across all marketing channels has skyrocketed in importance to marketing leaders in the last year, with 95% of leaders noting email marketing specifically is more tightly aligned with the marketing ecosystem compared to last year.

Privacy-related changes and challenges continue to worry marketers

The overall fragility of privacy – regulations, consumer behavioral shifts, and big changes coming from the likes of Apple and Google – are having both short and long-term implications on business. Changes in privacy regulations and a shift in consumer perception of personal data are a big factor in marketing leaders’ commitment to invest in earned and owned marketing channels.

Future of work success and employee happiness hinge on improved collaboration and communication

Globally, nearly half (49%) of companies are still fully remote; 41% are hybrid. When asked if they love it, hate it, or are indifferent to working remotely, 85% of marketing leaders say they love it; 90% of practitioners agree. Despite significant workload increases, it’s clear most companies have rebounded financially, and the increased investments in hiring and collaboration tools are allowing workers to succeed, mitigating frustrations, bottlenecks in work, and redundancy. To see detailed trends, more survey results and email benchmark data, download the full report.

Source: SparkPost Global Survey reveals 74% of marketing leaders concerned with impending privacy changes

Content Marketing Priorities for B2B & B2C in 2022

According to results of the study, these are the top priorities for content marketers.

More Money, Bigger Teams

B2B and B2C companies have small in-house teams or use a bevy of freelancers or content agencies to create content, so they can focus on running the business.

Among those surveyed by Parse.ly, nearly 80 percent had content teams of 10 or fewer.

Companies are creating more content than ever, but they recognize the need to create even more new and diverse content:

• 52 percent planning to increase their number of content creators.
• 66 percent planning to increase their content output.

B2B And B2C Content Priorities

Content-savvy companies use content throughout the buyers’ journey from top-of-funnel processes to past checkout.

In the B2B spectrum:

• 91 percent use content for brand awareness
• 85 percent to generate demand and leads
• 81 percent to build credibility
• 79 percent to educate the audience
• 68 percent to nurture leads
• 64 percent to generate sales

In the B2C space

• 84 percent use content for brand awareness
• 78 percent to educate the audience
• 73 percent to build credibility
• 60 percent to generate leads
• 60 percent to build loyalty
• 56 percent to generate sales

Getting The Word Out

Owned channels, such as company websites and social media, are the most popular methods of distribution with 90 percent and 83 percent of respondents.

Emails to listed customers were the third most popular with 77 percent of businesses, followed by paid social media and search ads at 62 percent and 49 percent, respectively.

Both B2C’s and B2B’s first choice for social media platforms was LinkedIn, which according to Parse.ly, brings in about 1 percent of overall social media traffic to a website.

Facebook was the second most popular method of paid and organic distribution and brought in 89 percent of traffic from social media sites.

Popular social media sites such as Instagram and Tik Tok were near the bottom of the list in both paid and organic for business’s preferred platforms.

B2B And B2C Wish List

The most common and easily created content is written, such as blogs and social media posts.

They successfully engage audiences, and blogs do well in search engines, but both B2C and B2B companies wanted to invest in video and longer form content if they had the resources.

Video on YouTube, Facebook, and other platforms whether organic or paid has high engagement.

What’s Working And What’s Not

One of the biggest pitfalls to existing content strategies is understanding the return on investment. According to the report, 51 percent of companies track and understand metrics, while 49 percent don’t understand how their content performs.

The biggest metric used to determine performance is page views, which many get from Google Analytics. Businesses may keep an eye on page views, but don’t track how content impacts sales, revenues, conversions, or the buyer’s journey.

The Outlook For 2022 And Beyond

According to the Parse.ly report, 2022 is a big year for expanding content teams and variety, but the existing legacy tools aren’t equipped to handle the intricacies of content metrics.

Source: Content Marketing Priorities for B2B & B2C in 2022

Google Ads API v10 is now available

Google has released v10 of its Google Ads API, the company announced Wednesday. In order to use some of the new features, advertisers must upgrade their client libraries and client code. Updated libraries and code examples will be available next week.

The new features. Updates in v10 of the Google Ads API include, but aren’t limited to:

• Smart Campaigns are now out of beta and generally available.
• Performance Max campaigns now support asset group signals.
• Support for Local Services Ads campaigns as an open beta.
• Addition of the Audience resource, which can be used as a criterion type.
• Addition of a new ExperimentService, which replaces the deprecated campaign experiments.
• Addition of a new meta parameter, omit_unselected_resource_names, which can be used to make GoogleAdsService return only resource name fields that you explicitly request in the SELECT cause of your query.

Source: Google Ads API v10 is now available

Bing’s New PubHub Offers Millions Of New Site Visitors

Microsoft announced the launch of PubHub, a new part of Bing Webmaster Tools that helps news publishers significantly extend their reach and attract more readers.

PubHub for News Publishers

PubHub is a new way for all news publishers, regardless of size, to dramatically increase their readership. The only prerequisite is for the publisher to already be signed up with Bing Webmaster Tools.

The goal of PubHub is to help high quality news sites to be discovered by millions of new readers by exposing their content at different points where an audience may be interested in consuming news content.

Which News Sites Will Qualify?

Bing listed four qualities they are looking for in a news site to feature through PubHub.

1. Newsworthiness
2. Originality
3. Authority
4. Readability

Newsworthiness

Bing notes that qualifying news sites must cover events and topics of interest that are actual news. Topics such as advice columns, how-to, weather, and stock information do not qualify.

Originality

When multiple organizations are reporting the same thing, Bing states that originality like facts, analysis and points of view are important.

Authority

News content must have citations to sources and provide thorough attribution, including author information.

Readability

Bing requires that sites not have intrusive advertising and that the content feature good grammar and spelling.

New Opportunity to Increase Readers

The new PubHub offers an opportunity for publishers who put the effort into creating quality reporting to be rewarded with more readers.

This is a win-win-win for Bing because it makes it more useful, for high quality publishers because they will be rewarded for their efforts and lastly it will be a boon for content consumers who will be exposed to more high quality journalism.

Source: Bing’s New PubHub Offers Millions Of New Site Visitors

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Google Search Console performance reports data issue may impact analytics

Google Search Console had yet another data issue with the performance reports, this time impacting Google Search, Google Discover, and Google News data. Google said this was a “logging issue on analytics” that occurred between February 1, 2022, through February 3, 2022.

Rankings not impacted. This was just an analytics issue, any drop in impressions and clicks might be related to the data logging issue and not related to any search ranking changes. Google said, “this is only a logging issue; it does not reflect a change in either user behavior or search results on Google.”

The issue. Google said this was a “logging issue on analytics.” Google wrote, “Performance metrics suffered a logging issue on analytics for Search, Discover, and Google News.” This may lead to you seeing “some discrepancies in your performance data during this period,” Google added.

Make sure to annotate your reporting, Google already added an annotation directly to the Performance reports. But if you send data to your clients or internally based on Search Console data, make sure to communicate this data issue with those reports.

Read more: Google Search Console performance reports data issue may impact analytics

Google tests Buying Guides in mobile search results

Google is testing “Buying Guides,” new mobile search results feature that presents users with various drop-down menu options to learn more about the product they’re searching for, the company has confirmed to Search Engine Land.

Tip of the hat to Brian Freiesleben for bringing this to our attention.

Editorial content — not e-commerce links — show up in the various drop-down options of the Buying Guide, which could be another place in the SERPs where your content marketing can appear.

“Brands” was one of the drop-down options in the Buying Guide I saw, so it’s safe to assume that the same Brand section will appear in many Buying Guides. Brands will want to ensure that they appear in the Buying Guides for as many of their products as possible — being omitted when your competitors are being shown to users puts you at a disadvantage.

How it works. A price range is shown at the top of the Buying Guide, right below the title of the search result feature. The drop-down menus within the Buying Guide cover several characteristics that might help shoppers narrow down their options. Tapping on a drop-down menu shows the user editorial content; Google did not say how it ranks content that appears in these sections.

The “Types” and “Brands” menus showed carousels that users could interact with to toggle the information shown (for example, users could select from “Composite,” “Aluminum,” “Hybrid” and “Wood” in the Types menu to find out more about bats of the selected material).

The rest of the drop-down menus were geared toward addressing a single question. For example, the “Size” drop-down provides a search listing and preview that answers the question “What is the average size for a bat?”

For the query I was able to trigger this test for (“baseball bats”), the Buying Guide appeared as the fifth organic, non-rich result listing, below 3 ads, a “Popular Baseball Bats” Shopping carousel, and the People also ask box. 

Google’s statement. “This is an experiment that helps shoppers discover relevant characteristics of a product by surfacing attributes like price, brand, and type,” a Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land. “We’re always testing new ways to improve the shopping experience for our users but don’t have anything specific to announce right now.”

There are some kinks to work out. In terms of understanding a user’s query and matching it with relevant content, Google has made a lot of progress over the last few years, touting advancements such as BERT and MUM. However, it still gets things wrong from time to time.

I used the query “baseball bats” to trigger the Buying Guide feature and, while most of the baseball bat drop-down categories and results were relevant, the results for “Body” and “Age” pertained to bats, the flying mammal (as shown above).

Whether the irrelevant results are due to Google’s systems mistaking baseball bats for animal bats or because the Buying Guides are still in testing, it’s clear that this feature is not quite ready for a wider rollout.

Read more: Google tests Buying Guides in mobile search results

Google says Shopify sites are in a good crawling state after reports of stalled crawling

Last week there were numerous reports that Google stopped crawling and Googlebot “flatlined” its crawling activity on many, if not, all Shopify websites. Google’s John Mueller responded to the reports this morning that yes, that is what it appeared to happen in Google Search Console but these sites “are in a good state” and “crawling will speed up again.” He said the issue was related to a “temporary drop in how we calculate how much we can crawl,” implying there was no issue with the Shopify sites.

In fact, if you click through to that thread, you will see more reports of this. Both Google’s John Mueller and Shopify’s Kevin Indig said they will investigate.

What was the issue? The issue seemed to be on Google’s end and not an issue with Shopify. John Mueller of Google said this morning “we looked into the sites that were mentioned and for all of them it was a temporary drop in how we calculate how much we can crawl. This happens from time to time and catches up after a few days usually. As far as the engineers are concerned, these are in a good state, crawling will speed up again, and there’s not something that needs to be done. It’s kinda confusing from the outside though.”

Read more: Google says Shopify sites are in a good crawling state after reports of stalled crawling

Secrets of marketing agency success

CallRail just released its 2022 Outlook for Digital Marketing Agencies. The good news: “2021 was a good year for agencies, and 2022 is looking even brighter,” said Mary Pat Donnellon, chief revenue officer at CallRail. 

“The report highlights the areas of success agencies saw last year and reveals what challenges they expect to face in 2022 and beyond. With client acquisition a key concern, agencies are utilizing — or plan to utilize in the near future — the latest marketing trends, like conversational marketing and artificial intelligence, to bring in new clients and keep their momentum going.” 

The study surveyed over 500 individuals employed full-time at U.S.-based marketing agencies to also determine how client expectations are projected to change in 2022 and which marketing trends agencies are currently implementing to bolster client acquisition. 

Read more: Secrets of marketing agency success

More news: Weekly News: Google allows ads for sports betting in Louisiana

Facebook Shifts Focus To Short-Form Video After Stock Plunge

Following the greatest single-day stock drop in recorded history, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg intends to shift the company’s focus to growing short-form video.

Zuckerberg communicated this plan to Facebook employees during a company-wide virtual meeting.

The stock price of Facebook’s parent company, Meta Platforms Inc, dropped by over 200 billion dollars this past week after reporting major losses in a quarterly earnings report.

Not only did Facebook’s expenses exceed its revenue, but it experienced a first-ever decline in daily active users.

From the third quarter to the fourth quarter of 2021, almost half a million people stopped logging into Facebook every day.

Investors panicked after learning the details of Facebook’s quarterly report, which triggered the stock to crash

How Did This Happen?

The reason for the loss of daily active users is due to TikTok, Zuckerberg says.

Explaining his company’s dismal performance, Zuckerberg cites an “unprecedented level of competition” from TikTok.

What Does This Mean For Facebook?

Unable to fix its advertising problem, Facebook is instead setting its sights on tackling the TikTok problem.

Facebook will take on TikTok by building up short-form video as its main draw.

The company is now said to be prioritizing Reels, a TikTok-inspired video feature available on Facebook and Instagram.

What Does This Mean For Marketers?

The writing on the wall indicates that video is the future of social media marketing.

TikTok is thriving, Instagram has been prioritizing video for over a year, and Facebook is now pivoting to video.

Even Snapchat is turning a profit for the first time, based on its recent earnings report.

Social media users have made it loud and clear they want to go where they’re being super-served with video content.

Now it’s the job of social media marketers to meet the demand.

If video editing and production isn’t already part of your skill set, it certainly should be.

If you’re not keeping up with the latest video trends, you need to get on that as well.

A combination of text and well crafted images used to be enough to captivate an audience’s attention on social media.

Now it’s almost a necessity to add video into the mix.

Source: Facebook Shifts Focus To Short-Form Video After Stock Plunge

Are you showing Gmail ads to customers who have unsubscribed?

The problem

What’s really happening here? Is Google Ads actually sending emails to customers?

Well, no (at least, I don’t believe so).

They’re Gmail ads, more than likely landing in the Promotions tab (based on the layout of your inbox), but the friction seems to come about when these ads fall into the inboxes of the non-techy people who are uninitiated into the complex cult of digital marketing nomenclature.

Here’s what I believe is happening: customers unsubscribe from a brand email account, and then wonder why they are still “seeing that brand” in their inbox. They don’t fully realize they are seeing ads instead of emails. (In their defense, those ads sure do put on a good act as an email.) 

In fact, I’ll even go out on a limb to say I’m a little surprised this isn’t a violation of some of the permissions and privacy laws like GDPR and CCPA – though I will more quickly note that I’m not a lawyer and just surmising there. 

To the normal non-marketer out in the world, is a business paid placement in the Sponsored Tabs really all that different from a business-sent email in the Sponsored Tabs (aside from one saying “Ad”)? 

In reality, customers don’t care. They’re seeing a brand they chose to no longer engage with – and are angry about it. 

After all, when you boil these two entities down to their simplest form, they are both business promotional efforts from a single brand.

The temporary, less-than-ideal, not-great fix

What can a business do about this to avoid showing Gmail ads to customers who have unsubscribed? 

Well, in the Discovery Campaign, a person could create and exclude a Customer Match audience list of the email addresses of those who have unsubscribed (noting the limits required to do so). However, this option is currently unavailable in Smart Shopping and Performance Max, so there is no way to exclude specific unsubscribers from seeing ads in these campaign types. 

Rather, the advertiser must rely on a more reactionary approach, waiting until someone has complained to them, and then instructing the CSR’s to reply with one of two options:

1. Help the customer find the “Stop Seeing This Ad” option on that ad. (To my knowledge, this doesn’t shut off all brand ads to that customer, only that specific ad. Let’s call this the Whack-A-Mole customer option. Spoiler: they’ll still hate your brand over this).
2. Get the customer to reply with their IP Address, and then exclude that IP address manually from each applicable campaign. This is not a viable long-term option because most IPs are dynamic, which means it will all change again at some point in the near future. 

The better solution

I realize there are other things that come into play in these decisions, but the better option would likely be for Google to allow some sort of synchronization between email marketing solutions and Gmail-Serving campaigns, or to allow for the same exclusion Customer Match list in Smart Shopping and Performance Max as they allow in Discovery.

The trick here is that smaller lists will likely be limited in serving per Google support documentation here. 

In other words, they are potentially unusable by all of the smaller advertisers out there who don’t have enough subscribers to meet the list requirements! 

Rock, meet hard place!

Source: Are you showing Gmail ads to customers who have unsubscribed?

WordPress Vulnerability in Essential Addons for Elementor

The Essential Addons for Elementor WordPress plugin, with over a million users recently patched multiple vulnerabilities that could have allowed malicious attackers to run arbitrary code on a targeted WordPress website.

LFI to RCE Attack Vulnerability

According to the U.S. Government NIST website, vulnerabilities on the Essential Addons for Elementor plugin made it possible for an attacker to launch a a Local File Inclusion attack, which is an exploit that allows an attacker to cause a WordPress installation to reveal sensitive information and read arbitrary files.

From there the attack could lead to a more serious attack called a Remote Code Execution (RCE). Remote Code Execution is a highly serious form of attack in which a hacker is able to run arbitrary code on a WordPress site and cause a range of damage, including a full site takeover.

Essential Addons for Elementor Patched

The vulnerability was announced on the National Vulnerability Database site on February 1, 2022.

But the “Lite” version Essential Addons for Elementor plugin has been patching vulnerabilities since the end of January, according to the Essential Addons Lite changelog.

A changelog is a software log of all changes made for each version that is updated. It is a record of everything that was changed.

Curiously, the changelog for the Pro version does only mentions “Few minor bug fixes and improvements” but makes zero mention of the security fixes.

Screenshot of Essential Addons For Elementor Pro Changelog

Changelog for the Lite version of Essential Addons for Elementor Lite Plugin

The changelog for the Lite version covering versions 5.0.3 to 5.0.5 were updated from January 25 – 28, 2022 to fix the following issues:

• Fixed: Parameter sanitization in dynamic widgets
• Improved: Sanitized template file paths for Security Enhancement
• Improved: Enhanced Security to prevent inclusion of unwanted file form remote server through ajax request

The changelog notes that today on February 2, 2022 the following security enhancement was performed for version 5.0.6:

• Improved: Data sanitization, validation & escaping for Security Enhancement

What is the Safest Version of Essential Addons for Elementor Plugin?

The U.S. Government Vulnerability Database has not assigned a severity score, so it’s unclear at this time how bad the vulnerability is.

However, a remote code execution vulnerability is particularly concerning so it’s probably a good idea to update to the very latest version of the Essential Addons plugin.

The WPScan website states that the vulnerabilities were fixed in Essential Addons for Elementor Plugin version 5.0.5.

However the plugin changelog for the Lite version of the plugin states that version 5.0.6 fixes an additional data sanitization issue today, on February 22, 2022.

So it may be prudent to update to at least version 5.0.6.

Source: WordPress Vulnerability in Essential Addons for Elementor

Microsoft Bing adds automobile and car search features

Microsoft Bing now has new car and automobile search features to let you find your next car, the company announced on its blog. You can search for used cars on Bing and then Bing will provide a search box that you can filter to find the car you are looking for.

What it looks like. Here are some screenshots of the search box in Microsoft Bing for searches on Kia K5 and SUV for sale:

Also, there are links to the MSN Autos marketplace in the knowledge panels for these car-related searches under “learn more” and “shop used cars” right above the car specifications.

Local. You can also browse local car inventory on Bing Local and Bing Maps. Microsoft said you “can now quickly and easily find vehicles for sale on Bing.com’s new Local Auto Dealership Storefront or using the browse-by-map feature.”

List your car. Microsoft allows you to list your car on MSN autos over here, where you fill out a listing form that will post your vehicle ready for sale. “In just a few simple steps, sellers enter the basics about the car for sale, upload photos, add a detailed description and finish the listing with any extra info that might make the car appealing to buyers. Your car is now for sale,” Microsoft said.

Source: Microsoft Bing adds automobile and car search features

Revamp your ABM strategy and fix the broken sales-marketing lead funnel

Account-Based Marketing is essential to any B2B strategy. And advanced practitioners are now looking for the tools to give them an edge to better connect with their audiences. This requires sales and marketing to work together to identify and engage buying groups within their target accounts. Enter Buying Group Marketing.

According to Forrester, 94% of B2B purchasing decisions are made by buying groups and not individuals. Using a traditional Account-Based Marketing (ABM) approach these days is not enough. You have to go more granular to reach the right contacts. You have to go to the buying group.

To learn more, register today for “Market, Engage and Sell to Buying Groups Who Want to Hear From You,” presented by Influ2.

Source: Revamp your ABM strategy and fix the broken sales-marketing lead funnel

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Google allows ads for sports betting in Louisiana

Google will begin accepting and running ads for sports betting and daily fantasy sports from certified, state-licensed entities in Louisiana beginning on January 28.

Advertisers must first apply for certification to be eligible. Application for certification became open to online gambling advertisers in Louisiana on January 27.

Louisiana isn’t the only state where it’s legal. Earlier this month, Google updated its Gambling and games policy to allow ads for sports betting in New York as well. The same requirement of being state-licensed and certified by Google also applies in New York.

If one of your clients is a sports betting company (or your brand is), the option to run ads on Google targeting users in Louisiana will soon be available to them, enabling them to reach more potential customers.

Read more: Google allows ads for sports betting in Louisiana

WordPress 5.9 launches with full site editing

WordPress, which continues to lead the CMS market by a wide margin, has announced its new release, WordPress 5.9.

Among the enhancements announced with the new release are:

• Full site editing making it easier to edit WordPress themes without using code (only for themes that support the new feature).
• Ten new blocks for site editing listed under Themes (including next post, previous post, post comments, etc.).
• The opportunity to save theme changes for specific templates or globally across the whole site.
• A new default theme (named “Twenty Twenty-Two”).
• New ways to customize and configure blocks.

There are also some changes on the developer side. For example, theme.json now supports child themes allowing users to build themes in WordPress Admin without writing code.

Why we care. If you’re a CMS user and you aren’t using WordPress in your current role, the chances are that you used it in your last role or will use it in your next. Its ubiquity makes changes relevant to almost all content creators. There’s nothing here as dramatic as the introduction of the block editor in WordPress 5.0, but there is a continuing trend of increasing the capabilities of no-code users.

Read more: WordPress 5.9 launches with full site editing

How to win with PPC in a dataless world

The biggest platforms in the digital advertising landscape — Google, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook — are making huge changes to accommodate current and upcoming consumer data regulations. And while many marketers bemoan this loss of data, thinking it will make it much more difficult to manage client campaigns, Sam Tomlinson, executive VP of strategy and analytics at marketing agency Warschawski, says this data, by itself, was never as valuable as once believed.

“Decision-making was never that simple, and some of the data that may have been taken away weren’t that good,” said Tomlinson in his presentation at SMX Next. “The same thing goes for conversion tracking; we have had that for a long time and it’s been hit-or-miss.”

“Just because some data has been taken away and some control levers have been taken away doesn’t mean that we’re in a world of hurt,” Tomlinson said. “It just means we have to adapt.”

There are still plenty of actionable insights to be gleaned from the data that is available. Here are three ways Tomlinson says marketers can succeed with PPC despite having access to fewer data.

Tomlinson recommends marketers grow their data pool using marketing mix models (MMMs), which are statistical analysis methods that determine the effectiveness of campaigns by measuring the impact of marketing strategies alongside sales and customer retention efforts.

“Historically, they [MMMs] have been staggeringly expensive and incredibly complicated and have taken weeks, months, or years to put together,” he said. “But now, we can open-source them. If you have an intern who knows Python, they could make one in a couple of days.”

Marketers can gather even more customer insights by adopting automated MMMs. Tomlinson cited Facebook’s open-sourced Robyn as an example, which aims to reduce human bias in data measurement.

Read more: How to win with PPC in a dataless world

Google Search Console logging issue may cause a drop in image search performance data

Starting on January 24, 2022, and currently still ongoing, Google said there was a “logging issue” with Google “Search data for images” which may result in a drop in the number of clicks and impressions you see in your Google Search Console Performance reports for images. This is just a reporting issue and has no impact on actual rankings or Google Search traffic.

The issue. Google wrote, “Search data for images is affected by a logging issue that might cause you to see a drop in clicks and impressions for images on your site in the Performance report.” This issue started on Monday, January 24, 2022, and is still ongoing.

Working on a fix. Google said the search company is “working on resolving this issue.”

No impact in Google Search. Google confirmed that this “issue is a logging issue only.” Google added that “it does not reflect a drop in either user behavior or search results on Google.”

If you see a drop in clicks and impressions for your image searches in the performance reports, this is a logging bug and not likely a ranking issue. Please annotate your reports and communicate these issues to your stakeholders.

Read more: Google Search Console logging issue may cause a drop in image search performance data

New Google mobile search feature: People Search Next

Google has launched a new feature in its mobile search results called People search next, a Google spokesperson has confirmed with Search Engine Land.

The feature is meant to “help people more easily get to and see popular next searches based on what they’re searching,” according to Google’s spokesperson.

What is People Search Next? People search next is an addition to Google’s mobile search results – not a replacement for another feature. It joins other Google search features like People also ask, People also search for, Refine this search, and Related searches. 

The feature is available on mobile in the U.S. for English-language queries, according to Google.

Read more: New Google mobile search feature: People Search Next

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Google tests favicons in-text ads

Google has confirmed that the company is running a small experiment that adds favicons beside the URL in-text ads.

Darcy Burk, founder, and CEO, of Burk Digital Factory, wondered if what he was seeing was new. Here’s the screenshot he shared on Twitter of what he spotted on a Google search results page.

At first glance, it looks like a pizza emoji. Even though emojis are listed as “invalided or unsupported characters,” according to Google’s Advertising policy help doc, they have been spotted numerous times in ad URLs in recent years.

How did Uber Eats, an online food ordering and delivery platform, manage to get that pizza emoji in its Google Ad? Especially considering that the ad directly below has a generic favicon?

Well, now we know. Because Burk received a reply from Ginny Marvin, Google’s ads product liaison. And it isn’t an emoji — it’s a favicon.

Read more: Google tests favicons in-text ads

Why entity search is necessary for SEO success

“The problem is never about content; the problem is always about discovery,” said Benu Aggarwal, founder of digital marketing agency Milestone Inc., in her presentation at SMX Next.

The way Google and other search algorithms analyze and rank content has changed drastically over the years, and not all pieces of content are primed for it. A website could have the best content on the internet but fail to rank well if it’s not optimized for discoverability.

“Traditional [content] systems are not designed to think about discovery, they are designed for user experience,” Aggarwal said. “That’s why the new Core Web Vitals update from Google has made such a big shift — it’s all about the discovery of content.”

Google and other search engines now discover content primarily through entity search, which is the method bots use to understand user intent while mapping other related sources to search queries. Marketers who fail to ensure their content aligns with this framework will find their SEO campaigns falling short.

Here are three reasons why marketers should adopt an entity search strategy.

Google has moved from term-based search to entities

Ever since its inception, Google has undergone numerous algorithm changes to provide better search results for its users. One of the most impactful shifts is the primary focus on entities as opposed to keywords.

“These changes are being rolled out not only to find it [content] but to remove the ambiguity of it,” Bill Hunt of Back Azimuth Consulting said during the same presentation. “A lot of these updates are moving Google from ‘strings to things.’”

Entities help build the Knowledge Graph

During the same presentation, Dixon Jones, CEO at DHJ Ventures, pointed to a Google knowledge panel of George Washington to highlight the connections the algorithms make.

“This is a great example of what Google can understand about an entity and an idea,” he said. “Google knows when he was born when he died, and all sorts of other important critical dates. Google can relate that to other presidents that are around at the time and it can even generate those extra pictures of other presidents as well.”

Entities help identify gaps in topics and intent

“If you want to optimize [content] in a modern-day world of MUM and BERT, you need to look at an entity, topic, and schema gaps,” said Jones.

Jones provided an example (shown below) of this identifying process using the location page of a Los Angeles cupcake shop called “Sprinkles.” Using crawling software, he was able to point to topic, entity, and schema gaps it was missing when compared to competitors.

Read more: Why entity search is necessary for SEO success

Evolving Core Web Vitals tactics using Cloudflare and WebpageTest

In our guide to Core Web Vitals tactics using Cloudflare and WebpageTest, we outlined basic requirements for using Cloudflare as a reverse proxy for testing tactical HTML changes with WebpageTest. Our version of the test is simplified from Patrick Meenan’s original concept, which uses HTMLRewriter() to select an element and modify code.

We’re going in-depth with this tutorial, but if you’re just looking for the Cloudflare Worker script, you can find it here.

Our first installment noted that it won’t keep up with changes at Search Engine Land. The LCP was hard-coded and we would need it to interact with a dynamic page and its values. While WebpageTest has, at the time of publication, the most well-thought-out waterfall chart and more details than you can imagine, it isn’t the fastest way to get results.

Lighthouse from the Command Line

Running the Lighthouse CLI (Command Line Interpreter) program with --extra-headers options needed for the test allows us to also simulate standard settings for Core Web Vitals the way we did with WebpageTest. You’ll need to work from a terminal emulator.

The evolution of our Testbed

Our aim is to demonstrate an evolution from an original concept for a testbed to a project suitable for our future events and articles. The testbed should not be confined to running performance evaluations; that’s just where we’ll start. But, it has to work fairly well for a number of situations with websites and this can prove pretty difficult. We’ll supply methods to help.

For example, sites often use relative paths to asset resources rather than absolute (with HTTP protocol and all). We’ll supply a block to match these so HTML will generally work. After applying this, when things still don’t work, switching troublesome references between the test and test subject hostnames often does the trick, even for CORS policy violations.

Lighthouse gives you LCP

It’s relatively easy to retrieve LCP references using Lighthouse, PageSpeed Insights, or WebpageTest. Presuming the LCP qualifies for preload, like when it’s not a <div> or a <p>, and when it isn’t already getting preloaded, provide our script the href value by URL ‘query param’ structure (or return HTML with a form) to test for changes to a page’s LCP timing with preload.

Most technical SEO practitioners are handy at modifying request query parameters to process different things in server-side programs, like Google search results. Using the same interface, our script will preload the LCP using the path you apply in the “lcp” parameter value and passes it to a function called addPreloadAfter() for interpolating HTML for the test.

Read more: Evolving Core Web Vitals tactics using Cloudflare and WebpageTest

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Google Ads launches placement reports for Performance Max campaigns

Google Search Console launches desktop page experience report

How to build a long-term, search-first marketing strategy

Neeva seeks to expand user base with free subscriptions

Neeva, the ad-free, private search engine co-founded by former SVP of Google Ads Sridhar Ramaswamy, has launched a free basic subscription as an alternative to its full-featured subscription, which costs $4.95 per month. While a worldwide rollout is planned, both subscriptions are currently only available to users in the U.S.

Why we care. Newer search engines, like Neeva, DuckDuckGo and Ecosia, are finding novel ways to differentiate themselves from Google and Bing by rallying behind a unique selling point to appeal to a niche, but enthusiastic user base. A subscription fee can be a strong deterrent for new user acquisition, and Neeva is notably one of the few search engines that charges one.

“Even with a limited trial period, hundreds of thousands of users search with Neeva every month, and we think that the introduction of a free tier will drive this to new heights,” the company said in the announcement. If Neeva’s free offering gains traction, search marketers may need to pay attention as organic campaigns will be crucial for reaching Neeva’s users.

However, if free users don’t upgrade to the paid subscription, Neeva may have to adjust its strategy, especially if it can’t compensate for the additional cost of those users with ad revenue.

Free vs. premium. Free subscribers have access to Neeva’s ad-free search engine, however, customization options may be limited.

The premium subscription includes everything in the free subscription, but also includes access to Neeva’s latest search features, membership in a Neeva-hosted community, access to a monthly Q&A with the founders and additional privacy tools, such as a VPN and password manager.

Source: Neeva seeks to expand user base with free subscriptions

Google Gives Sites More Indexing Control With New Robots Tag

A new robots tag, called indexifembedded, lets websites give Google more direction over which content to index in search results.

With this tag you can tell Google to only index content on a page if it’s embedded through iframes and similar HTML tags.

The indexifembedded tag overrides the noindex tag.

That means you can use noindex to keep a whole URL out of search results, and apply the indexifembedded tag to make a specific piece of content indexable when it’s embedded on another webpage.

Google says it created this tag to fix an issue affecting media publishers:

“… while they may want their content indexed when it’s embedded on third-party pages, they don’t necessarily want their media pages indexed on their own.”

When To Use The Indexifembedded Tag

This new robots tag is not something that applies to a lot of publishers, as it’s intended for content that has a separate URL for embedding purposes.

For example, a publisher of a podcast may have webpages dedicated to each podcast episode, which each have their own URLs.

Then there would be URLs pointing directly to the media, which other sites can use to embed the podcast on one of their pages.

Such a URL might be used when inserting a podcast episode as a source of reference, like I recently did in an article about Googlebot crawling.

How To Use The Indexifembedded Tag

There are two ways to use this new robots tag.

To enable your content to be indexed only when it’s embedded on other pages, add the indexifembedded tag in combination with the noindex tag.

See an example of what the code would look like in the image below:

Alternatively, you can specify the tag in the HTTP header.

Refer to the image below for an example of how that would look.

Currently, only Google supports the indexifembedded tag.

Source: Google Gives Sites More Indexing Control With New Robots Tag

Jetpack Discovers Backdoor in Popular WordPress Themes, Plug-Ins

AccessPress Themes customers should be on the lookout for updated versions of the company’s WordPress themes and plug-ins, because according to Jetpack, older versions of the popular add-ons were compromised to distribute backdoors as part of a supply chain attack.

Jetpack says it discovered the backdoored versions of these add-ons in September 2021. It disclosed the problem to AccessPress Themes a few days later, but it didn’t receive a response until it escalated the issue to the WordPress.org plug-ins team in October 2021.

AccessPress Themes then “immediately removed the offending extensions from their website,” Jetpack says, and by January the company had released updated versions of most of the plug-ins. But it still hasn’t updated any of the affected themes, according to Jetpack’s advisory.

That means AccessPress Themes customers’ response will depend on whether they’re using one of the company’s themes or one of its plug-ins. Jetpack says the former group should find a new theme; the latter group should make sure updated versions of the plug-ins are installed.

Source: Jetpack Discovers Backdoor in Popular WordPress Themes, Plug-Ins

Google Says It’s Not Possible To Prevent Outages

Google says it’s impossible to prevent outages from happening, but the company is aiming to get better at alerting the community when issues are detected.

This topic is discussed by Google’s Search Relations team, which is made up of John Mueller, Martin Splitt, and Gary Illyes.

Together, in the latest episode of the Search Off the Record podcast, they discuss what to expect from Google in 2022 and beyond.

Among the topics they address is whether there will be fewer outages this year.

Unfortunately, Google can’t make that promise.

However, you can expect more communication from Google when outages and bugs are discovered.

Here are some highlights from the discussion on Google outages.

Google Outages Will Continue To Happen

As Illyes says, Google runs on computers, and they’re prone to outages from time to time.

As Mueller notes, it seemed like outages were occurring more frequently toward the end of last year, but that wasn’t necessarily the case.

Illyes goes on to explain how that perception was created as a result of Google improving its communication around outages.

Google To Be More Transparent About Outages

Illyes says it’s not that there were more outages, it’s that Google started to announce outages that previously would have gone unnoticed.

You can expect more of that communication going forward.

Even if an outage isn’t noticed by the search community, Google will still announce them when they’re discovered internally.

While it may seem like there are more outages occurring, it’s just Google acknowledging and talking about them more.

It’s not that there are actually more outages happening.

Source: Google Says It’s Not Possible To Prevent Outages

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Shopify chat bug leads to titles with (1) in Google’s search results

IndexNow Enables Data Sharing Between Search Engines

Google Ads launches placement reports for Performance Max campaigns

Google Ads has launched placement reports for Performance Max campaigns, the company confirmed to Search Engine Land on Thursday. Placement reports can be generated to see where ads have served for Performance Max campaigns as well as how many impressions they’ve received.

Tip of the hat to Gianpaolo Lorusso and Giuseppe Scollo for bringing this to our attention.

Google created the placement report to provide some insight into where Performance Max ads are showing, which may help advertisers with their brand safety efforts.

Unfortunately, the data only shows where ads have served and their impressions — not click data. Nevertheless, this data may help inform your campaigns. 

Google’s statement. “Placement reports for Performance Max campaigns are a new reporting resource for advertisers to easily see where on Google’s channels ads have served and associated impressions,” a Google spokesperson said, “We created these reports to give advertisers more transparency and assurance around where their ads are showing.”

Marketers should keep an eye on Performance Max campaigns. Introduced in October 2020, Google has steadily built out this automated campaign type. Support for it has been added to the Google Ads Insights page as well as within the Google Ads API.

Performance Max campaigns became available to all advertisers in November 2021. Google also announced that beginning sometime in 2022, Smart Shopping and Local campaigns will be rolled into Performance Max, which might indicate that the company is trying to usher more advertisers to this campaign type.

Read more: Google Ads launches placement reports for Performance Max campaigns

Semrush acquires SEO training website Backlinko

Semrush, the SEO toolset provider, has acquired SEO training website Backlinko, the company announced Wednesday, for an unannounced sum.

Why we care. Semrush’s acquisition will likely strengthen the company’s own SEO education hub, Semrush Academy. This could make Semrush a more robust source of SEO knowledge and may help it pull away from other toolset providers.

Additionally, Backlinko draws in 500,000 organic visits a month, according to the announcement. Semrush is likely to market to those users to drive them further down its sales funnel.

Why Semrush may have acquired Backlinko. “The desire to acquire Backlinko was fueled by Semrush’s commitment to inspiring both the current and next generation of digital marketers,” according to the announcement.

In an email sent to Backlinko subscribers, Brian Dean, founder of Backlinko, explained that he wanted to further scale his business, but had hit a plateau in terms of what he could do on his own. “Then, out of the blue, I got an email that changed everything,” Dean wrote, sharing that he was approached for this deal by Max Roslyakov, SVP of marketing at Semrush.

Some SEOs have speculated about other potential reasons for the acquisition: “How much was Backlinko worth to Semrush? Breaking down courses, traffic, and estimated MRR from converting that traffic. What if a competitor came in?” tweeted Victor Pan, head of technical SEO at HubSpot.

“That’s what makes the acquisition itself the joke about our industry — A leading, listed tool company, buying a site, purely for the links gained by publishing nonsense,” Peter Mindenhall tweeted, suggesting that one of the motivators behind the deal was the acquisition of Backlinko’s backlink profile. Mindenhall’s remark about “publishing nonsense” refers to the mixed reception that some of the guidance in Backlinko’s content has garnered from the SEO community.

Read more: Semrush acquires SEO training website Backlinko

How analyzing search data can improve your decision-making

Much like a physical marketplace, the online search environment has both its successful businesses and those that fail to gain traction. Matt Colebourne, CEO of Searchmetrics, used the analogy of a “high street” — the main area of commercial or shopping — to describe the current state of search marketing in his presentation at SMX Next.

“Just as you have the winners and the losers in the physical space, you have the same in the digital space; page two of Google or any search engine is fundamentally the ‘backstreet,’” he said. “That’s where a lot less audience is going to end up.”

Marketers have long used search data to optimize their content so it meets user needs. But many fail to apply those same insights to inform decisions that impact the long game.

“A lot of companies make the mistake of optimizing for growth way too soon,” Colebourne said. “They settled for their current product set and their question becomes, ‘How can we optimize sales of what we have?’ Whereas the questions they should be asking are, ‘What are the sales that we could have? How much of our target market do we have right now?’”

Each day Google processes over 3.5 billion searches, which provides marketers with a wealth of data. Here are three reasons why analyzing this search data improve marketers’ decision-making processes.

Read more: How analyzing search data can improve your decision-making

Google explains how it deduplicates Top Stories from main search results

Google will deduplicate a link from its main web results if that same link appears in the first Top Stories slot, so long as the Top Stories section appears before the main web results, according to Danny Sullivan, public search liaison at Google.

However, if this is not the case (e.g., the main web results appear above the Top Stories section), Google will not deduplicate the link (as shown above, to the right). “And again, it’s something we’re reviewing,” Sullivan noted.

What Google said. “Just to cap off with the further clarification I promised, we deduplicate a link from web results if a link appears as the first link in Top Stories and if the Top Stories box appears before web results,” Sullivan said on Twitter, “If it comes after, we don’t.”

This explanation was provided after Dieter Bohn, executive editor at The Verge, called out Google over search listings that were “stealing [The Verge’s] content.”

The query can influence deduplication.  As Sullivan explained, searching by exact headline may not reflect how most people seek out information. Bohn’s example query, “trials and tribulations turning a real camera,” was a partial match for The Verge’s article — Sullivan’s example of what a typical user might search for was “turning the camera into a webcam.”

Read more: Google explains how it deduplicates Top Stories from main search results

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Instagram Subscriptions Let Creators Make Monthly Recurring Income

Instagram is building on its monetization capabilities with a new subscriptions feature, which allows creators to make monthly recurring income.

Starting today, Instagram Subscriptions is launching in a limited test with a handful of creators.

Followers can opt-in through a “subscribe” button on the creator’s profile.

Those who are eligible for the new subscriptions feature are in full control over the monthly price.

Paying the monthly fee offers the following benefits to subscribers:

• Subscriber Lives: Creators can broadcast exclusive livestreams to subscribers only.
• Subscriber Stories: Creators can publish stories just for their subscribers.
• Subscriber Badges: When subscribers leave comments a badge will appear next to their name to let the creator, and other users, know they’re a loyal fan.

Who Is Eligible For Instagram Subscriptions?

Currently, Instagram Subscriptions is only available to a limited number of US creators during the test period.

Instagram plans to expand access to more creators over the next few months.

Source: Instagram Subscriptions Let Creators Make Monthly Recurring Income

Marketers, Google agree that proposed ‘surveillance advertising’ ban goes too far

A new bill, the Banning Surveillance Advertising Act (BSAA), was introduced by Democrat lawmakers on Tuesday. The bill would no longer allow advertisers to target ads to consumers, with only a couple of exceptions.

Those exceptions: broad, location-based targeting and contextual ads.

Why the legislation was introduced. “Disinformation, discrimination, voter suppression, privacy abuses,” and other harms were cited by California Congresswoman Anna Eshoo, the lead sponsor of the bill, as the reasoning behind pushing this legislation forward. 

Privacy search engine DuckDuckGo tweeted its support of the bill, saying that “The collection of your private data to target you w/ads violates your privacy & leads to discrimination, manipulation, & disinformation.”

In short, the lawmakers want to stop allowing advertisers to “exploit” and profit from the data collected from consumers.

Google’s response. Google’s take was both predictable and apparent from the title of the blog post it published: “The harmful consequences of Congress’s anti-tech bills.” This was in reference to this legislation, as well as other antitrust bills pending in the Senate this week (the American Innovation and Choice Online Act and the Open App Markets Act).

How might all of this impact Google search? The end result would be lower-quality search results, Google said. For example, the company warned that the proposed legislation would prevent it from:

• Showing directions from Google Maps in its search results. 
• Providing answers to urgent questions.
• Highlighting business information when someone searches for a local business.
• Integrating its products (e.g., Gmail, Calendar, Docs). 

Industry says the bill goes too far. The general consensus seems to be that the bill won’t (or at least shouldn’t) pass in its current state and won’t actually accomplish what lawmakers want — and would have serious consequences for the marketing industry.

Source: Marketers, Google agree that proposed ‘surveillance advertising’ ban goes too far

Google Changes Recipe Structured Data Guidance

Google’s recipe structured data requirements have changed. The old way of structured data is no longer valid and Google requires updating the recipe structured data to the latest requirements.

Recipe Structured Data

Recipe structured data is information that publishers communicate to search engines like Google in order to help them better understand the content. Structured data also allows Google to display the content in engaging ways that call attention to the recipes called Recipe Enhancements.

Typical Recipe Enhancements are:

• Guided Recipes
• Recipe host carousel

Three Recipe Structured Data Properties Changed

Google’s documentation states that they removed their guidance for specifying a time range for the cookTime and prepTime properties.

Google now only supports exact time for both the cookTime and prepTime properties and one more that Google did not document.

The range of time is no longer supported.

A Third Structured Data Property Changed

Google’s changelog documentation states that only two properties have changed, the cookTime and prepTime properties.

However there is actually a third property that has also changed.

So although Google’s documentation omits noting the change in the totalTime property, it’s probably prudent to take note that this property has also changed and moving forward to not include a time range for the totalTime property since Google is no longer recommending it.

Recipe Structured Data

Many recipe sites rely on plugins for their structured data. If you use a recipe structured data plugin that also uses the time range, it may be useful to update the current plugin to the most recent version to make sure that your recipe structured data is up to date.

Source: Google Changes Recipe Structured Data Guidance

Microsoft launches new Chromebook rival and other devices for students

Microsoft has launched its Surface Laptop SE and this new student laptop aims to take on Chromebooks in the K-8 education market.

First announced in November of last year, the Surface Laptop SE is the software giant’s most affordable device yet starting at $249 in the US and £229 in the UK. This slim and sleek laptop features a long-lasting battery, an HD camera for video conferencing and a modern processor to load apps and files quickly.

Microsoft is also launching a new version of Windows 11 called Windows 11 SE that will power this new device and optimize performance with curated, education-first apps designed for budget-friendly devices according to a new blog post. At the same time, students can get the best of Microsoft 365 including Microsoft Teams, Office 365 and Minecraft Education Edition to help them build the skills they’ll need for the future in a secured and simplified environment designed to limit distractions.

Students will be able to access files for school and productivity apps both online and offline with built-insecurity while IT can manage downloads, deployment and security settings. However, unlike the rest of Microsoft’s Surface devices, the Surface Laptop SE will only be available for schools to purchase through authorized Microsoft Surface Resellers like CDW, Staples, Verizon and Insight in the US and Softcat, BT and Computacenter in the UK.

Source: Microsoft launches new Chromebook rival and other devices for students

Instacart partners with Chase and Mastercard to issue its first credit card

Credit card issuer Chase announced on Tuesday that it is partnering with Instacart and Mastercard to issue the Instacart Mastercard. It will launch sometime this year and will be issued as a World Elite Mastercard.

The press release doesn’t outline the specific perks the Instacart Mastercard will include. However, there are several perks that all World Elite Mastercards typically include.

Cardholders can expect exclusive offers with DoorDash, HelloFresh, and Lyft. Protections include cell phone insurance and ID Theft Protection. Cardholders also get the World Elite Concierge service, a ShopRunner membership, and access to Mastercard’s VIP Experiences.

The press release does state that cardholders will “earn accelerated points on purchases across the Instacart marketplace.” In an email, Heather Caufield with Chase Communications explained that Chase isn’t ready to share specific details yet, but she said that the points earned can be redeemed with Instacart in flexible ways.

Source: Instacart partners with Chase and Mastercard to issue its first credit card

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Google Search Console launches desktop page experience report

With the upcoming Google page experience update coming to desktop, today Google launched a new page experience report for desktop in Google Search Console. “To support the upcoming rollout of page experience ranking to desktop, Search Console now has a dedicated desktop section in its Page Experience report to help site owners understand Google’s ‘good page experience’ criteria,” Google wrote.

How to access. You can access the report by clicking here or by going to Google Search Console, and clicking on the Page Experience link under the experience tab.

What it looks like. Here is a screenshot of this report for one of my sites:

More details. Google first launched the page experience report in April 2021 before the launch of the page experience update. The new Google Page Experience report offers metrics, such as the percentage of URLs with good page experience and searches impressions over time, enabling you to quickly evaluate performance. You can also drill into specific pages to see what improvements need to be made.

You can use this report to make the necessary adjustments to the desktop versions of your pages before Google rolls out the desktop version of the page experience update. As a reminder, we do not expect there to be a huge ranking change due to this update, but it may impact sites more if their stories show in the top stories section, since a solid page experience score is required to show in the top stories carousel.

Read more: Google Search Console launches desktop page experience report

Google Search Ranking Update January 14th & 15th (Unconfirmed)

Friday and Saturday, January 14th and 15th there may have been another unconfirmed Google search ranking algorithm update. This comes a few days after the unconfirmed January 11th update. There is some chatter but this time, the Google tracking tools are showing much higher volatility.

There does appear to be more volatility surfacing this morning, Monday, January 17th. It is a bit early to see, as the chatter is not lining up right now with what the tools are showing. Of course, it is a US holiday today, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day. So that might result in less chatter, as some are off, but it wouldn’t directly represent why the tools are showing so much change.

So if you saw ranking fluctuations around this time, you are not alone.

Read more: Google Search Ranking Update January 14th & 15th (Unconfirmed)

Google: Target CPA In Google Ads Not Going Away In 2022

Google’s Ginny Marvin via the AdsLiaison account on Twitter confirmed that target CPA, tCPA, is not being canceled in 2022. She wrote “we have no plans to sunset tCPA in 2022” after there was some speculation that it might be turned off in 2022.

Ginny did add “As announced last year, we did make some changes to how Smart Bidding strategies are organized and advertisers can continue to access tCPA functionality by using maximize conversions with an optional target CPA.” Here is the news about the changes Google made to tCPA last year.

Target CPA bidding is a Smart Bidding strategy that sets bids for you to get as many conversions (customer actions) as possible. When you create the Target CPA (target cost-per-action) bid strategy, you set an average cost you’d like to pay for each conversion. When a customer does a Google search that fits your product or service, Google Ads uses your Target CPA to set a bid based on the auction’s likelihood to convert.

Read more: Google: Target CPA In Google Ads Not Going Away In 2022

Google: Hosting Companies Should Serve 500 Status Code On Robot Detection Interstitial

Google’s John Mueller posted one of those PSA tweets this morning asking hosting companies that trigger robot detection interstitials to not use a 200 status code. John also said not to place a no-index on that page. If you do these things the pages served with these can be dropped out of the Google index and search results.

Instead, remove the index and serve a 5xx status code, that will help Googlebot deal with the robot detection interstitial.

Read more: Google: Hosting Companies Should Serve 500 Status Code On Robot Detection Interstitial

Google Product Reviews Update Will Expand, May Use Machine Learning & Can Be Incorporated In Core Updates

Google’s John Mueller was asked a series of questions around the product reviews update on last Friday’s video hangout. In short, it will expand to other languages and countries, it probably does use machine learning and eventually, it might be incorporated into the larger core updates.

As a reminder, we had two product reviews updates in 2021, one in April 2021 and the other in December 2021.

John basically said Google does plan to expand the product reviews update beyond just English, as we covered before – but he has no timeline for when that might happen.

Here is what was said:

AUDIENCE: So I have a few questions about product reviews, which is my domain. So I noticed that recently you made some moves in the US to promote product reviews, where there were real testing instead of just comparison. Do you have any time estimates of when we could expect these upgrades to be, like, in the market stack in French or German?

JOHN MUELLER: I don’t know, with most things, it’s something, where we tend not to pre-announce them. So it’s hard to kind of say ahead of time. And for some of these updates, the team moves very fast in kind of, like, rolling things out globally. And for other types of updates, it’s very slow. And sometimes there are also policy and legal reasons kind of that make things a little bit harder. So it’s always very tricky to give an estimate.

Then he was asked if the product reviews update uses human input or machine learning? John basically said no to human input but likely to machine learning. John said this takes an “algorithmic approach” and not a human editing approach, like most of what Google does. He isn’t sure if this specific update uses machine learning, but he said it probably does “to some extent.”

Read more: Google Product Reviews Update Will Expand, May Use Machine Learning & Can Be Incorporated In Core Updates

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Shopify chat bug leads to titles with (1) in Google’s search results

Over the past couple of weeks there have been complaints from some Shopify site owners that Google was showing a (1) in the title name for their pages in the Google search results page. The issue turned out to be related to a chat feature activated on those Shopify sites, the chat feature fixed the issue and the Google search results should soon no longer show (1) in the title name.

What it looked like. I found a screenshot of this happening for a site in the Shopify forums dating back a couple of weeks ago, here is that screenshot showing the (1) at the beginning of the title name in Google Search.

What it looks like now. The issue was resolved and Google recrawled and processed this specific URL, so the (1) is no longer there:

It will take time. If you still see a (1) before your title name in the Google Search results, give it more time. Google has to recrawl and reprocess all of the URLs that were impacted and that can take time. If you want to expedite it, you can use the URL inspection tool in Google Search Console and submit that URL to the index manually. But again, the issue will resolve itself over time.

Google’s statement. Google published a statement on this issue in the Google forums, basically saying it was an issue with the chat feature dynamically embedding (1) in the title attributes of these pages and thus Googlebot picked up on it and indexed it.

Source: Shopify chat bug leads to titles with (1) in Google’s search results

Google Ads bug again for Gmail on desktop Safari browsers

Google has confirmed a bug impacting how ads are served on Gmail desktop with Safari browsers. This is impacting only Google Ads that should be served in Gmail for users accessing their email using the Safari desktop browser.

What is the issue. The issue seems to be an issue with displaying or serving the ads to this “significant subset of users” on Safari desktop while accessing Gmail.

When it started. Google said this issue first started on Saturday morning, January 15, 2022 at 9:36 AM UTC.

When will we know more. Google said that it plans on giving us an update on Tuesday, January 18, 2022 at 8:00 PM UTC. Google said “we will provide an update by Jan 18, 2022, 8:00 PM UTC detailing when we expect to resolve the problem.”

Again. Yes, this happened a couple of weeks ago to the same subset of users back in late December.

Source: Google Ads bug again for Gmail on desktop Safari browsers

What happened when we turned off AMP

Since then, a lot has happened, but the bottom line is we have seen very little disruption to our traffic and have reaped the benefit of having a clearer picture of our audience analytics.

What happened to traffic? For us, it is difficult to draw any major conclusions about traffic changes since we turned off AMP. Search Engine Land is a media website that primarily produces journalism, so we are very much tied to the news that emerges. As you would expect, when big news like core updates or major Google Ads changes happens our traffic jumps. But as the news dies down during the holiday season we usually see month-to-month declines. That why year-over-year benchmarking is generally favored by news organizations.

We did not see any year-over-year declines in traffic that we could tie to AMP aside from the loss of pageviews to a handful of pieces that routinely spike for organic traffic. For example, an older article about Google SERP Easter Eggs ranks highly for us and usually spikes a few times during the year (including Easter time!). Mobile traffic to that post was previously going to the AMP version. However, we turned off AMP at a time that piece was spiking on mobile and did not see that traffic shift back to our native page. The page itself has never really driven quality traffic so the lost traffic isn’t really a problem.

Safeguarding. Around the time we shut off AMP we also took a few steps that could safeguard us in case the experiment caused a big traffic decline. We increased our publishing volume for starters. We also adjusted the strategy in our newsletters to better optimize for click-through rate. That move was also in response to Apple’s privacy change in iOS 15 that now makes open rates a less reliable metric.

The big win. One of the main reasons for turning off AMP was to better understand our metrics. Despite several failed attempts at AMP stitching in Google Analytics, we never could tell how our audience moves from our AMP pages to our native ones. Users were undoubtedly being double-counted as unique in both the AMP and our native website dashboards. The clearest indicator that this was true is in the change we’ve seen in return visitors since we turned off AMP. The number of sessions by return visitors has jumped by 30% since we made the change, and now we have a far better picture of our most valuable audience set.

Source: What happened when we turned off AMP

Can Google’s Help Documents Be Trusted?

Google admits its help documents aren’t always up to date and says it’s worthwhile doing your own research on recommended best practices.

Martin Splitt of Google’s Developer Relations team, and Michael King, founder and managing director of iPullRank, get together to talk about how Google’s documentation can lead developers to not trust SEO professionals.

SEOs provide recommendations to developers based on the information in Google’s official documents.

Google aims to keep those documents accurate and trustworthy, but the information sometimes lags behind what’s actually working in SEO, and what’s no longer relevant.

A specific example they addressed is a situation that came up in 2019, when Google revealed it stopped supporting rel=”next” and rel=”prev” years before telling the search community.

That meant SEOs were telling developers to use pieces of code that were no longer relevant to Google Search.

Rather than making an official announcement about it, Google simply removed the documentation related to rel=”next” and rel=”prev”.

It wasn’t until Google’s Search Advocate John Mueller received a question about it on Twitter that anyone from the company told the search community about this change.

Some SEO professionals and developers may have come to that conclusion on their own after noticing Google understood pagination just fine without the use of rel=”next” and rel=”prev”.

Splitt shares background information about this situation, and the difficult choices Google had to make when it came to communicating the changes to the search community.

Why Aren’t Google’s Help Documents Always Up To Date?

Google Search changes quickly, so Splitt cautions against looking at the company’s documentation as the single source of truth.

Regarding the rel=”next” and rel=”prev” situation, Splitt says:

“The docs are not always in phase. We’re doing our best to work with the teams and help them to keep their documentation updated, but it does every now and then happen in this case like a bunch of engineers in search quality figured out — ‘hey, hold on, we actually don’t really need the rel-next and rel-prev links anymore to figure out that there’s like a pagination going on. We can figure that out from other things on the page by themselves.’”

When it was discovered the code was no longer needed, Google’s engineers removed support for it.

Source: Can Google’s Help Documents Be Trusted?

WordPress plugin vulnerabilities more than doubled in 2021

What just happened? Third-party WordPress plugin vulnerabilities increased significantly in 2021, and many of them still have known public exploits. Cybersecurity firm Risk Based Security said 10,359 vulnerabilities were reported to affect third-party WordPress plugins at the end of last year, of which 2,240 were disclosed in 2021. That’s a 142 percent increase compared to 2020, but the bigger concern is the fact that 77 percent of all known WordPress plugin vulnerabilities – or 7,993 of them – have known public exploits.

A closer look revealed that 7,592 WordPress plugin vulnerabilities are remotely exploitable while 4,797 have a public exploit but no CVE ID. For organizations that only rely on CVEs for mitigation prioritization, the latter means that more than 60 percent of vulnerabilities with a public exploit won’t even be on their radar.

Another issue Risk Based Security touched on for organizations is their focus on criticality rather than exploitability.

Source: WordPress plugin vulnerabilities more than doubled in 2021

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