The Week In Search & SEO: May 4, 2018

Week In Search - May 4, 2018

It has been an interesting week. Learn about how agencies are now able to Google My Business accounts, how Twitter is making news stories more prominent and updates to AdWords Editor. I have also written an interesting piece on how to determine user intent allowing you to find and fill holes in your content.

Top Global Search News

Google Hijacks Speedtest.net With Their Own Speed Test WidgetGoogle Hijacks Speedtest.net With Their Own Speed Test Widget

Webmasters, internet users and others have counted on speedtest.net for years to tell them their internet speed. Now, it would appear that Google has hijacked the link for users entering speedtest.net on Google’s homepage by providing them with a direct link to Google’s own speed test.

Google Announces New Job Posting Guidelines and Requirements
Following up on Google’s recent announcement that they would manually penalize companies with job postings on their pages that are no longer available, Google has also announced that the schema markup on the detailed job listing page has been updated. Furthermore, Google says that you need to use structured data on the job listing page.

Second Batch Of Google Mobile-First Indexing Began
Webmasters have again confirmed that Google is sending out notifications that their site has entered the mobile-first index. Earlier, Google announced that they are now relying on mobile sites to rank web pages, but if you do not have one, they will still rely on your desktop site.

Google Featured Snippets Expand By Category/Topic
Google appears to be expanding their featured snippets by allowing users to choose options from a dropdown menu. Each separate section appears to come from a different website.

5 Easy Wins for Structured Data in Google
Schema structured data is a great way to get your well-built website ranking higher. While it is coding, this article points out that you can go a long ways with simply copying, pasting and testing.

Hooray! Google My Business Descriptions are Back
Google has reintroduce the addition of descriptions to the bottom of Google My Business. Remember that only the first 250 characters show, and learn other important tips for writing these tips for local businesses in this helpful article.

Google My Business Now Lets Agencies Register Accounts

Google Featured Snippets Expand By Category/Topic

Updates to Google My Business will be rolling out over the next few weeks. Among the more important of these updates will be the ability for agencies to register businesses in an unlimited number of locations along with improvements in managing those accounts, including the ability to offer posts and merchant descriptions.

Google AdWords Editor Version 12.3 Released After 6 Months
Google has finally released its new Google AdWords Editor, and it contains many updates including the ability to view and download reports, filter for very specific words, attach account-level ad extensions and more. This is the first update that the Google AdWords Editor has received since November 2017.

Send your Recipes to the Google Assistant

Google has now updated structured data properties for recipes following last year’s introduction of recipes for Google Home. Only recipes containing recipe developer documentation and recipeInstructions will be considered for inclusion on Google Assistant on Google Home.

Google: Don’t Change URLs When Replacing Old Content With New Content|
Google’s Latest Statement Of The Obvious –> Unless there is an advantage to changing URLs, Google’s John Mueller recommends that you just put updated content on the page that outdated content was on without changing the URL. There is no need to create a new URL and redirect there.

Top Local Search News

Surprisingly – no major news in local SEO this week though there is some obvious crossover with the Google My Business announcements listed above. Feel free to comment below if you think we missed anything.

Top PPC News

Google’s New Ad Type Targets Users Watching YouTube on TVs
Users are watching a combined total of over 150 million hours per day watching YouTube, and it is available in over 85 percent of American homes. Those viewers may be reachable through a new Google AdWords type.

Microsoft Launches new Audience Network, ‘Audience Ads’ at Bing Partner Summit
At the Bing Partnership meeting, Microsoft announced the rollout of their Microsoft Audience Network that Microsoft claims can reach up to 63 million search users that Google cannot access. The network consisting of 1.5 billion Windows users, 500 million LInkedIn users and 120 million Office365 subscribers among others can now be reached through the use of Audience Ads search-extensions and Audience Ads campaigns may signal an end of the partnership between Microsoft and AOL.

Microsoft Launches New AI-Powered Audience Network

Microsoft Launches New AI-Powered Audience Network

Microsoft is counting on machine learning algorithms to deliver the right ads to targeted audience members at the correct time via their new Microsoft Audience Network. Marketers will have the choice of using their current Bing Ads Audience Ads or creating Audience Ad accounts to participate to take part in this new marketing program.

Google Combos Shopping & Dynamic Remarketing in new Goal-optimized Shopping Campaign Type

Google combos Shopping & dynamic remarketing in new goal-optimized Shopping campaign type

Goal-optimized shopping, a new subtype of Google ad, aims to combine dynamic remarketing and standard shopping to delivered the desired result that can be either increased revenue or increased return on ad spend. These ads will be available across all Google networks including Google Search results, Gmail, YouTube, search partners and the Google Display Network.

Google AdWords New Responsive Search Ads Can Show 3 Headlines

Google AdWords new responsive search ads can show 3 headlines

For over a year, Google has been trying to get AdWords users to give up manual A/B testing, and the company is now offering users an incentive if they will participate. Google is now giving responsive search ads three headlines instead of two and letting them use two 90-character descriptions instead of one 80-character description.

Top Social Media News

Instagram Lets Users Upload Multiple Photos and Videos to Stories
Instagram is allowing users to select up to 10 photos and videos to upload to stories they publish on the social media site. For now, the service is only available for Android, but it will be available for iOS users in the next few weeks.

Twitter to Display News Articles More Prominently
Regardless of the platform that you use Twitter on, the company will start promoting news articles more prominently by grouping together all of your friends who have shared the same article. This move may indicate Twitter strong desire to be seen as a news app instead of a social networking app.

Snap Crashes to a Record Low After its Earnings Disaster (SNAP)

Snap crashes to a record low after its earnings disaster

Snap crashed to a record low of $10.96 a share on May 2, 2018, after announcing that they had missed their projected earnings by more than $14.23 million. While the company blamed seasonality and the redesign of their Snapchat app, the company also said that second-quarter earnings will be significantly below previous expectations.

Internet Marketing-Related Tech

First 360 VR Google Video Doodle: Georges Melies The Illusionist

On the 106th birthday of À la conquête du pôle (The Conquest of the Pole, 1912) , Google has released their first 360 virtual reality video doodle. Dragging the clip that appeared on Google’s homepage on May 3, 2018, allows viewers to see things going on in every direction.

Best Opinion Pieces

Searcher Intent: The Secret Ingredient Behind Successful Content Development

Searcher intent: The secret ingredient behind successful content development

I share my process of taking the guesswork out of finding user intent by showing you how I create a keyword roadmap. Start by finding all the secondary and supplemental intent terms using your favorite keyword tool, then classifying those terms in a meaningful way. Then, figure out the probability of users entering those keywords looking for content related to your niche market.