Full Transcription

[Introduction] – 00:00

Hey everyone, welcome to episode 97 of the TWIMshow. This is your host, Sajid Islam. And today, I’ll be going over the notable news and updates from the digital marketing space from the week of February 21, 2022.

[Update 1 – Facebook Reels Available Globally] – 00:10

With that, let’s start off today with some news from Facebook or the company previously known as Facebook, which is Meta today. But anyways, Facebook has announced that Facebook Reels is available globally to all users. Previously it was limited to certain users, to certain countries, but now it’s available to everyone. I was one of those few people that I had Reels on my newsfeed and I will tell you that this was quite entertaining. Obviously, I found some of the Reels that showed up on Facebook were very informative, educational. There were some entertaining stuff, but
mostly I skimmed over it. But with the news over here is that it’s going to make that much harder for TikTok, right now because Facebook is basically pushing on Reels because they want to counter, they want to counter TikTok’s rise popularity. And obviously this is one of the ways. So anyways, some of the stuff that you want to be aware of is that with Reels, you have the option to remix a Reel and you would be able to save Reels in draft modes. Now if you are someone who does a lot of Facebook lives, then you’d be able to take clips from the Facebook Live and be able to make Reel out of there and test different things. This part is very important only because YouTube allows you to do that, take long lives and cut it up and basically push it out as Reels. So Facebook is kind of taking some of the stuff from YouTube and taking some things from TikTok and trying to figure out can we keep users engaged, entertain things like that.

[Update 2 – LinkedIn Has Launched The LinkedIn Marketers Group] – 02:00

With that having said, let’s move on to the next stuff with LinkedIn. LinkedIn this week was very busy. So we have three updates, I believe from LinkedIn. But anyways, the first one is LinkedIn has launched LinkedIn Marketers Group. This is for anyone who is doing LinkedIn marketing, wants to do more in LinkedIn marketing, you want to become a guru in LinkedIn marketing. This is a group you want to be part of. The group is going to provide insights and tips which will aim to provide community support and directions for digital marketers. That’s exactly reading from LinkedIn’s announcements. Its focus is going to be sharing industry knowledge, relevant topics, as well as conducting discussions about new and upcoming changes, as well as insights for the platform itself to assist improve LinkedIn marketing tactics. Having said that, I will tell you LinkedIn Groups has been very spammy in the past. Maybe with LinkedIn’s moderation, LinkedIn Firepower, which is basically the dollar amount they have and be able to hire people and be able to moderate and ask questions and things like that, that might be a good thing. But if you have been a group owner. It’s not that easy, right? Again, I’m saying it’s not that easy. But with the right amount of money and you can hire the right mindset, the right people. And with that, you would be able to grow a group. And if LinkedIn is able to do that, this is actually amazing because that kind of shows the possibility of creating online communities in groups. And groups are not necessarily a new phenomenon. Right. Groups have existed even before the social media platforms. There was Vbulleting back in the day, forums, news, I forgot what they are called. But there is to be. Back in the early days, we developers, programmers used to come together and help each other out. But it’s just that with the Internet and making things everything so easy, there are a lot of trolls and a lot of crappy people who have been able to now join the stuff who have not otherwise joined the groups. And that’s what I mean by stuff. So it’s a dominant soul, right? You want everybody to be you want to be inclusive and invite everyone else. But at the same time you realize, oh, crap, now we are attracting a lot of the unwanted people as well because they are just coming in and messing up the whole group. But anyway, with that, LinkedIn has obviously rules. You cannot spam, you cannot do this and blah, blah, blah, covering all those things because these are like some things we know. It’s some of the rules that we follow to be a good citizen. We do not curse, we do not judge people. We do not things like that. Having said that, go ahead and try it out. What I will do is I’ll see if I can put a link to this group thing on our show notes page so that you can check it out. Okay.

[Update 3 – What You Need To Know About LinkedIn Podcast Network] – 04:46

With that what you need to know about the LinkedIn Podcast network. So LinkedIn is trying a new tactic which is basically creating this opportunity for you to post your podcast through LinkedIn. So that way your people are sorry, what am I talking about? So that way you can listeners be able to access LinkedIn podcast by following each podcast host in the app, subscribing to their newsletter, as well as listening to via
Apple podcast, Spotify and other audio sources. Now, this is at a high level. It’s a pretty cool thing. For example, I am recording this show. Maybe you are following me on LinkedIn and you did not know this. Now you’d be able to follow me. Oh, Sajid has a podcast. Let me go subscribe to it. Now when you subscribe to it now, you’d be able to listen to it and you’ll be able to follow me, get the new email address things without necessarily having to step away from LinkedIn. So if you look at where the industry is heading, it’s like saying if you’re in LinkedIn, chances are you’re going to stay in LinkedIn. We want to keep you in LinkedIn and we will just let you enjoy the content on the LinkedIn platform. So imagine if you’re at a basketball game, you want to be at a basketball game, but there are obviously may not be so great food restaurants
at the Stadium, but you don’t want to really step outside of the Stadium to go eat and come back and do things like that. That’s just a lot of hassle. Similarly, if you’re on LinkedIn, you want to be able to consume the content on LinkedIn and be able to interact with the host and everything like that. You don’t want to like in a step away. Having said all these things right now, you would have to apply to basically get your podcast up on LinkedIn. Podcast. It’s not automatic, but I think I’m sure it’s down the road. It’s going to become available to everyone. It’s just that with LinkedIn, we’ve seen the same thing with LinkedIn Live.

[Update 4 – LinkedIn Reveals New Post Analytics] – 06:41

Okay, next up, LinkedIn has announced or revealed a new post analytics. Linkedin is hoping to provide interesting insights into content performance with new post analytics tool which will provide you information about the people who are reading your LinkedIn updates as well as the number of reaction it has received. The new analytics will give you a better idea of who is viewing your content with filters for job titles, industry, geography and more. This could be a terrific approach to make sure your material reaches the people you want to target. If you have created personas for your own branding or marketing efforts, this could be a quick way to double check our target audience and fine tune your strategy based on the information you have gathered. This is I am reading this straight from the show notes, folks, you are listening to this. This is powerful. This is amazing, right? I mean, Besides saying you got 10 likes and 20 crap and not 20 crap, 20 thumbs down and 20 love. This is powerful. I love it. And I saw the examples, pictures and the images that came out with this announcement. I was like blown away by it. I love it. Also, there’s going to be a new emoji, but I’m not really diving deep into it because it doesn’t matter.

[Update 5 – Microsoft Advertising Rolls Out Dynamic Descriptions] – 07:54

Okay, next up, we have Microsoft advertising roles. Dynamic descriptions. So what are dynamic descriptions? Well, dynamic descriptions are part of dynamic search ads. This is for people who are using dynamic search ads, which is basically you handing your money to Microsoft and saying, hey, Microsoft, I want to run search campaigns so that anytime someone searches marketANDgrow, my campaigns show up, my website shows up. Previously, when you do the dynamic search ads, what happened was Microsoft would just automatically generate the headlines but you’d still have to provide the text description. So again, marketANDgrow is not a great example. Let’s just talk about another product let’s just say I’m looking around in my office to see what can we do?Let’s just say purple pen, right? I have this purple pen in front of me, a purple Mark highlighter. So let’s just say you sell purple highlighters. Previously, you would set up a campaign as a dynamic search campaign and you would say, well, I sell purple highlighters. So anytime someone searches purple highlighters, please show my ad. And Microsoft AI – artificial intelligence would basically create automatic headlines. So someone is looking for best purple highlighter. And based on what you have on your website copy, Microsoft would probably respond to that and show your ad. But you still have to write the description of that ad manually and put it in there. Now Microsoft is saying, hey, you know what, not only can we do dynamic search headlines automatically, we are going to also do dynamic search descriptions automatically as well. Okay? Just give us your money and we’ll do the rest for you, which is awesome. It’s good and it’s bad. If you’ve been listening to the podcast, I don’t like all this automatic stuff all the time. It’s just like, don’t be so blind. Having said that, I will tell you though, if you do choose this path, you need to make sure the copy on your website is crisp It talks about everything. So that because that’s the copy that they’re going to use. The artificial intelligence is going to use to be able to write your headlines as well as descriptions by default. It’s going to be not by default. It’s going to be enabled by default from April. But having said that, what I will tell you is check it out. And if you’re running Microsoft Advertising and you are currently using dynamic search ads, then it will automatically be turned on dynamic search descriptions starting April as well.

[Update 6 – Microsoft Advertising Launches Auto-Apply Recommendations – Advertisers Opted In By Default] – 10:32

Okay, with that, let’s move on to the next update, which is Microsoft launches auto-apply recommendations and advertisers are opted in by default. Again, I do not like this. Please do not opt me into things automatically because most of the time all these auto-apply recommendations are incorrect because it’s an algorithm at a high level. They don’t understand my business, they don’t understand my customer, they don’t understand my search patterns and they just like apply all these things. While Microsoft will not increase your ad spend, will not increase your budget, it will make changes into a lot of different areas. Five different areas, right? It will auto-apply recommendations on expanded ads, responsive search ads, multimedia ads, removing negative keyword conflicts, fixed conversion goals, settings issues. Imagine how would you feel if the pharmaceutical company, whatever medicine you’re on, decides, hey, we will automatically change the dosage. We will change things that you’re like. Hold on a second. That’s why I have a doctor for he who decides. He’s trained, he knows what needs to be done. He knows what dosage. And because there could be other side effects. I could have other medical complications that may arise
from this dosage and changes things like that, right? The same concept applies to all these auto-recommendations. These are good, but take it with a grain of salt apply and look at the whole picture comprehensively. Does this matter to me? If so, then change it. So having said that, of course you can Uncheck it and stop Auto-Apply recommendations. To get turned on automatically, you have to turn it off manually. But hey, that’s what they want. They want to opt you in and then you have to opt out until obviously there’s enough backlash. But for now, if you’re listening to the show, just keep an eye out. Whether it’s Google or Microsoft, they’re both like this. Do not auto apply recommendations. It has never gone right for anyone that I’ve come across who does advertising, paid advertising, I’m telling you, not just for myself. I’ve seen it across the board. It’s very rare for someone to come into any of the forums or groups that I’m part of where they say, hey, you know what? We turned on auto-applied recommendations and it’s been rocket ship. Never.

[Update 7 – Google Page Experience Update For Desktop Is Live] – 12:44

Okay with that. Next update is Google. Google Page Experience Update for Desktop is live. This is something we have covered in our show from the time Google announced Page Experience Update as well as to when they turned on Page Experience Update for Mobile. Now Page Experience for Desktop is live, according to Google’s own announcement. So what is Page Experience Update? It’s basically the same thing as
Google Page Experience Update for Mobile. The only thing the difference between mobile and desktop is that in an easier website, mobile-friendly. In mobile, Google grades you on that. On desktop. It doesn’t. ther than that the other options are LCP, FID, and CLS remains the same, which is the core web vital metrics, which is like Content Layout Shift. CLS stands for Content Layout Shift. Does the content are you a website that loads one group of content and then as it’s Loading, you add insert a lot of other content and then the layout shifts, right? And you’ll see some news websites do that. They will insert ads, they will do things and you will get hit by that. First, FID is First Input Delay. How long does it take from the page Loading up to being able to enter a content? So again, not everyone will have that because some pages are just text only, they don’t have any forms. But if you do have a form, then Google is going to grade you on that. The last is LCP. It’s basically saying how long does it take for the largest content to render, which is if images and if it takes a long time, then Google is going to Ding you. And I believe I mentioned this in the last time when it was announced that Google Page Experience update is going to come for desktop in February that if your site is already optimized for mobile, you are pretty much good. You don’t really have to worry about too much, but you just have to go into Google search console and check the report. Right. And how to check the report is something on our show notes page. Check it out. But again, if your site is already optimized for mobile and you’re already good not known extra stuff to do. But if you get hit by any of the stuff, then go ahead and take a look at it. You will be glad you did.

[Update 8 – Google Merchant Center Adds Short Title Attribute] – 15:05

Okay, next update is Google Merchant Center Adds Short Title Attribute. This is good because initially in the past you could have a title of a product which is very long and then your ad or your product shows up in Google discovery and everything is chopped off. Right. People don’t even get to see it. But Google is saying that while the short title is between one and 150 characters long, that’s what Google would allow. Between one and 150. Google is saying you should keep it between five and 65 characters because it will get chopped off. Right. And obviously Google gives us some guidance on what to do, what not to do, things like that. So who is this update for? This update is for anyone who is in e-commerce who has Google Merchant Center who has uploaded products. Again, remember we covered this in our show where Google has done partnership with Shopify, WooCommerce. And I forgot what the other platform was where if you use any of these ecommerce platform, your products will automatically go to Google, right? So when it automatically goes to Google and if you’re not using the short title, you’re going to miss out. Right? Again folks, this is why you listen to this podcast because it brings you actionable items that will help you move the needle on your small business. Okay, so having said that, go ahead and start using the short title attribute because hey, you want to be found, you want to be able to sell. This is one of the ways because if people see good description or short titles or titles properly, they know what your product is all about. They’re going to go click on it and they’re going to buy it. Okay.

[Update 9 – Google Shopping Experience Scorecard] – 16:40

Next update on the same level is Google Shopping Experience Scorecard. It’s basically a new tool dubbed by Google where Google is saying hey, if you have good shopping experience, we are going to rank you higher or we’re going to help you show up on the search results. They did not exactly say rank, but I’m just making it up. Okay. That’s my how to say understanding. But coming back, what Google is saying is that long story short, they’re going to grade you on four areas. Okay. And this is going to be based on let me look at you, let me look at this. Okay. You’ll be graded on shipping speed, shipping costs, return cost and return window. Okay. And then on those four topics, Google is going to rate you excellent, comparable opportunity on each metric. Now, can you game the system? Absolutely. Because what Google is going to do is Google is going to take this information from your website, on your product page and they’re going to grade you on that. Right. So of course, you could just say, hey, there’s no return cost, return window is 90 days, shipping cost is zero, and shipping speed is instantaneous. I ship it within a day. Right. Of course, your score is going to go up, but eventually you’re going to have crappy customers on the other end. They’re going to complain. It’s something you want to do. Do you want to be one of those business. But what Google is saying that if you provide good customer experience, which is obviously you score higher on all of these four stuff, then Google is going to reward you with a boost in ranks, a badge and other perks that will help people find their business in the Google Shopping tab of Google Search. So, folks, if you’re listening to this, it matters for you to do the right thing. Figure out, hey, can we remove shipping costs? Can we ship it faster, things like that, rather than try to get in the system. Okay. At the end of the day, it’s easier to have trust, build a brand versus try to gamify the whole system. Everyone’s going to hate you. Okay.

[Update 10 – Google Ads Launches Enhanced Conversions For Leads] – 18:49

Next up on Google Ads. Google Ads has launched enhanced conversions for leads. It was not previously available. Now, how does it work in the back end? You really don’t. Well, let me take a back. How does it work in the back end? In the back end, what’s going to do is as you run Google Ads, enhance conversion for leads, what you’d be able to do, is you’d be able to send first-party data such as email address, name, home address and or phone number back into Google in a hashed format. And Google will be able to use that data to be able to find more similar customers for you and show your ad accordingly. Previously, it was an available enhanced conversion does work. Again, Google has a lot of information. So all you have to do is basically find that one customer, two customers, and send the data back to Google in a hash format. Now, you don’t have to do all the hard work because if you are obviously running enhanced conversion for leads, you already have other conversions set up. So it’s your Ads guy who probably makes sure that everything is being sent back to Google and then off you go. But I just wanted you to know that it’s an option that is there. Now the next update for this week

[Update 11 – Google SEO ‘Discovered – Currently Not Indexed’ Status] – 20:09

is that actually the two last updates are on SEO. One is a lot of people have complained or asked Google, Hey, Google, I see my status is discovered but currently not indexed. So Google’s John Mueller has said, hey, we know some people complain about that, but it could be forever. Okay, because people get like discovered. Google has seen this page, but they haven’t indexed it. How long do I have to wait before
my page gets indexed? Well, John Mueller kind of lays it out very nicely is that, look, even Google has finite resources, even though that their goal. Google’s goal is to index all the world’s content, but they cannot get to everything, especially if you add a lot of pages at the same time. And number two is that Google needs to make sure that Google decides arbitrarily if this page has any value or not. So what does this mean?
It means folks don’t just be adding content for the sake of adding content. Add valuable content. Right? Add content that will help answer people’s question. Add content that makes you people read your page. Okay. And then as Google will slowly and slowly, when they come in and they discover the page, they see this is a valuable content. They’re gonna oh, this is unique. This page says something about the company, let me go and index it and then they will index it. But once they have put it in a Discover state, keep in mind it can be there forever. Okay, maybe you need to copy the page, rename the page, create a new page, and then submit the thing like that.
Again, I’m not trying to tell you how to teach you how to game the system. I’m just saying that maybe if it’s there and it’s bugging you, you really think that page should be indexed? Maybe try a different link with different content.

[Update 12 – Is There SEO Value Of User Comments On Websites?] – 22:03

Okay, lastly, a question was asked and this is the last update for this week was is there SEO value of user comments on website? The answer is yes with a caveat. Or maybe it should be. Maybe yes only because yes, it does have value if the comments are in supporting the content on the page. Right If the comment’s off-topic, if the comment’s spammy, it has links and all those things doesn’t talk about it, then the search engine is going to get confused and it’s going to punish you. Right? So what John Mueller from Google says, yeah, there is value if you can moderate it and make sure it supports the content on the page. So if it’s talking about wealth building and the support talks about wealth building and talks about how the program has helped things like that, obviously it’s going to be immensely helpful, but if it’s irrelevant, it will degrade the quality of the page. And obviously you’re going to get dinged on it and delisted things like that.

[Closing] – 23:10

So with that, folks, that’s it for this week in marketing. Now you know everything that happened during the week of February 21, this is your host Sajid Islam signing off until next week. Take care. Bye, bye.

Thank you for tuning in this week, it was a pleasure to serve you all. Hit the subscribe button so that you remember to sign on next week. Same place, same time for another round of This Week In Marketing.

1. Facebook Reels Available Globally (00:10) – Facebook is taking its battle against TikTok to the next stage with the full launch of Reels on Facebook, using the platform’s massive scale to capitalize on the popularity of short-form video content.

Facebook Reels will include remix functionality to encourage trend engagement, while creators will also be able to post Facebook Reels up to 60 seconds in length, in line with Instagram’s Reels extension launched last July. Users will also be able to share publicly posted Reels to their Stories, adding even more engagement potential.

In addition to this, Facebook’s also adding Reels drafts and a new video clipping option “that will make it easier for creators who publish live or long-form, recorded videos to test different formats.”

That last one is important because, like YouTube, Facebook’s looking to use its short-form option as a complementary channel while also giving creators the opportunity to build community and maximize their monetization potential through longer content as well.

 

2. LinkedIn Has Launched The LinkedIn Marketers Group (02:00) – LinkedIn Has Launched a New Group to Provide Insights and Tips for LinkedIn Marketers, which will aim to provide community support and direction for digital marketers. LinkedIn’s redesigned Marketing Partner Community Group will focus on sharing industry knowledge and relevant topics and conducting discussions about new and upcoming changes and insights from the platform itself to improve LinkedIn marketing tactics.

You can visit the LinkedIn Group now and request to join. You should hear back about approval within 24 hours. Once you’ve joined, you’ll see group posts in your LinkedIn feed.

 

3. What You Need To Know About LinkedIn Podcast Network (04:46) – With the debut of its new ‘LinkedIn Podcast Network,’ LinkedIn is trying to capitalize on the growing popularity of podcasts by hosting a variety of shows centered on major professional themes, prepared by both internal and external experts. Listeners will be able to access all of LinkedIn’s podcasts by following each podcast host in the app and subscribing to their newsletter, as well as via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other audio source. The key benefit of engaging with these hosts on LinkedIn, according to LinkedIn, is that you’ll be able to expand the conversation beyond passive listening.

 

4. LinkedIn Reveals New Post Analytics (06:41) – LinkedIn is hoping to provide interesting insights into content performance with new post analytics tools, which will provide you information about the people who are reading your LinkedIn updates, as well as the number of Reactions each has received. The new analytics will give you a better idea of who is viewing your content, with filters for job title, industry, geography, and more. This could be a terrific approach to make sure your material reaches the people you want to target. If you’ve created personas for your own branding or marketing efforts, this could be a quick way to double-check your target audience and fine-tune your strategy based on the information you’ve gathered.

 

5. Microsoft Advertising Rolls Out Dynamic Descriptions (07:54) – Dynamically generated headlines are often helpful to drive relevant experiences and more traffic for your business. Now to help advertisers provide even more relevant ad experiences while also saving them time, Microsoft Advertising has announced dynamic descriptions for DSA, a new tool that’s unique to the search advertising landscape. Dynamic descriptions are the default option for creating new DSA campaigns in Microsoft Advertising online. With dynamic descriptions, you can supplement your generic static descriptions with more relevant information to your searchers and help drive more clicks. This is now available in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, and Germany.

When you’re in your DSA campaign settings, you’ll now see a new checkbox that says Enable dynamic search ad text. Once you’ve done that, you’ll be able to start getting descriptions dynamically generated and powered by Microsoft Advertising’s Artificial Intelligence. They are continually optimized to provide the best messages to your customers.

Starting in April, Microsoft Advertising will enable dynamic descriptions for all existing DSA campaigns, with any advertisers that are insensitive verticals remaining opted out for their current campaigns.

 

6. Microsoft Advertising Launches Auto-Apply Recommendations – Advertisers Opted In By Default (10:32) – Microsoft Advertising’s auto-apply recommendations are now broadly available, the company stated Monday. In March 2021, Microsoft Advertising released a beta version of this feature, which is currently generally available. Advertisers are automatically enrolled in all five of the platform’s suggestion kinds. While enabling auto-apply recommendations will not boost your budgets, it does give the platform permission to make adjustments on your behalf without your input. You should decide whether or not that is acceptable to them, and if it isn’t, you should opt-out.

Microsoft Advertising currently offers the following auto-apply recommendation types:

  1. Create Expanded Text Ads.
  2. Create Responsive Search Ads.
  3. Create multimedia ads.
  4. Remove negative keywords conflicts.
  5. Fix conversion goal-setting issue.

Advertisers can opt-out of auto-apply for any recommendations at any time. Each auto-apply recommendation has a check box in front of it. Simply clearing those who do not want to be adopted will opt-out, and they won’t be added to the account moving forward. However, they can still be manually applied in the future.

 

7. Google Page Experience Update For Desktop Is Live (12:44) – Google confirms the Page Experience algorithm update is now rolling out to desktop search results. The update is scheduled to finish rolling out by the end of March. Back in November 2021, we shared about the Page Experience update when it was first rolled out to mobile search results, and now it will be applied to desktop search results. For the most part, Page Experience on desktop includes the same ranking signals as the mobile update except for “mobile-friendliness.” Mobile-friendliness, which is a signal built into page experience for mobile search, will not apply to desktop.

This means the same three Core Web Vitals metrics: LCP, FID, and CLS, and their associated thresholds will apply for the desktop ranking. Other aspects of page experience signals, such as HTTPS security and the absence of intrusive interstitials, will remain the same as well.

Google Search Console has a new report dedicated to evaluating Page Experience criteria on the desktop versions of web pages. You can utilize this report to get an idea of how your site may be impacted by the update when it finishes rolling out at the end of next month. The desktop report can be accessed from the Page Experience tab in Search Console, directly underneath the mobile report. It looks identical to the mobile report, with the exception of the Mobile Usability section.

 

8. Google Merchant Center Adds Short Title Attribute (15:05) – Online retailers can now add an optional short title to identify their products in Google Merchant Center. The new [short_title] attribute differs from the existing [title] attribute in that the short title should be concise and is intended to show in “browsy experiences,” like Discovery campaigns and Shopping ads on Gmail. Full product titles often get truncated in the “browsy” contexts Google has mentioned, which means that users may not be seeing all the relevant information from your ad. Short titles provide merchants with an alternate, concise way to identify their products, which could help to improve click-through rates. While Google allows 1–150 characters for this field, it recommends using between 5 and 65 characters. Google also advises that merchants:

  • Use a relevant, concise short title that clearly describes their product.
  • Ensure that the short title describes the product on the landing page.
  • Use professional and grammatically correct language.
  • Avoid foreign languages unless they’re well understood (e.g., “sushi”).
  • Avoid using capital letters for emphasis.
  • Avoid including promotional text (i.e., prices, sales dates, your business’ name, etc).
  • Don’t add extra white spaces.

You should also highlight the most important details by placing them towards the front since users don’t always read the entire title. And, adding a brand name is a good idea if it helps differentiate the product — this can be important when you sell similar products across brands.

 

9. Google Shopping Experience Scorecard (16:40) – A new tool dubbed the Shopping experience scorecard has been announced by Google for Google Merchant Center retailers. In other words, if these merchants produce a “great customer experience,” Google will reward them with “a boost on ranks,” “a badge,” and “other perks that will help people find your business” in Google Shopping tab of Google Search.

There is a help document that explains that “the program will monitor the experience you provide to customers in several areas, including shipping speed, shipping cost, return cost, and return window. You’ll be given a rating of “Excellent,” “Comparable,” or “Opportunity” on each metric. “To see your performance for each metric and your overall score:

  1. Sign in to your Merchant Center account.
  2. From the navigation menu, click Growth.
  3. Click Shopping experience scorecard.

Suppose you are a merchant and part of Google Merchant Center and you know you can provide that level of “excellent” customer service. In that case, it might make sense for you to share these metrics with Google so you can gain better visibility in Google Shopping.

Google did add that if you do not provide the data, you will “not be penalized” — so there is no reason to feel pressured to provide the data to Google, outside of knowing that other merchants might and they might benefit, while you may not.

 

10. Google Ads Launches Enhanced Conversions For Leads (18:49) – Google has officially launched enhanced lead conversions. Google Ads’ Enhanced Conversions feature can “increase the accuracy of your conversion measurement and unleash more effective bidding,” according to Google. You may receive first-party customer data such as an email address, name, home address, and/or phone number when a client completes a conversion on your website. It works in conjunction with your existing conversion tags by securely delivering hashed first-party conversion data from your website to Google. This information can be collected using conversion tracking tags, hashed, and provided to Google in hashed form, where it can be utilized to improve conversion measurement.

 

11. Google SEO ‘Discovered – Currently Not Indexed’ Status (20:09) – When asked how long webpages can remain discovered but not indexed, Mueller says:

“That can be forever. It’s something where we just don’t crawl and index all pages. And it’s completely normal for any website that we don’t have everything indexed.

And, especially with a newer website if you have a lot of content, then I would assume it’s expected that a lot of the new content for a while will be discovered and not indexed.

And then over time, usually it kind of shifts over, like well it’s actually crawled, or it’s actually indexed when we see that there’s actually value in focusing more on the website itself. But it’s not guaranteed.”

12. Is There SEO Value Of User Comments On Websites? (22:03) – Should visitors to your website be able to make comments? According to Google, user comments on web pages may bring additional SEO value, but they must be strictly regulated for spam and other concerns that may develop. It’s incorrect to suggest that website comments are a ranking component because allowing users to submit comments will not improve your site’s ranking. User comments can provide SEO value to web pages in the form of added context. If people stay on topic and provide comments that are relevant to the topic of the page, this information can help with search rankings. Comments relevant to the webpage’s subject matter can help Google better understand the content and determine which types of queries it should rank for.

It’s also true in the other direction. When visitors leave irrelevant comments, it might degrade the overall quality of the page. Off-topic comments may provide Google conflicting information about what the page is about and which queries it should appear for. Even if they are written by people who are not directly linked with the site, websites are accountable for user comments.

It’s your responsibility if it’s on your website.

For example, comments containing spammy links may result in a penalty or demotion in search results.

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