Google Marketing

Make The Best Of YouTube Yours With YouTube Select

19 May 2020 by

Helping you connect with your audience is our top priority. This is especially important as digital takes precedence in how we interact, communicate and stay connected.

To make this even easier for your brand, today we’re announcing a new global content solution called YouTube Select—a reimagination and unification of solutions like Google Preferred and prime packs. It offers more flexibility to reach the audiences you can’t find elsewhere in the content and places they choose to watch—with the confidence that your buy is brand-safe.  

More content for greater relevance at scale

Viewers say YouTube offers the most extensive video library.1 To help you find the right content for your brand, YouTube Select surfaces a diverse mix of content packages called lineups—each tailored to globally and locally relevant needs like beauty & fashion, entertainment, technology, sports and everything in between.

This year, we’re introducing a new offering called emerging lineups in the U.S. Emerging lineups provide an easy way to efficiently extend the reach of your campaigns among up and coming or niche channels, with the added benefit of brand suitability controls. 

Beyond our lineups offerings, YouTube Select can now help advertisers reach new audiences across top YouTube apps and verticals like YouTube Kids, Sports, Music and Originals with sponsorships and programs. Across markets, advertisers should work with their local teams to customize the right YouTube Select plan for their needs.

More capabilities for the TV screen, and how you buy

Around the world, people are turning more and more to YouTube on the biggest screen in their home. This shift in viewing behavior means lineups contain more TV screen inventory than ever before.

For example in the U.S., over 100 million people watch YouTube and YouTube TV on their TV screen each month.2  And according to Comscore, YouTube has a higher household reach and share of watch time than the next 3 ad-supported streaming services combined.3  

That’s why we’re introducing a dedicated streaming TV lineup as part of YouTube Select in the U.S. to help brands reach their audiences where they are watching. Streaming TV combines the best of YouTube TV and lineups content, both on TV screens. That means being able to easily reach your audience with a single, scalable offering on the big screen across the best content, including popular creators, YouTube Originals, live sports, feature length movies, timely news and more.

We also recently announced Brand Lift measurement on TV screens, which will be available globally for the YouTube app and coming soon for YouTube TV, to better help brands measure their results.

In addition to more capabilities on the TV screen, we are also bringing more choice to how you buy. Many countries, including most across Europe and Asia-Pacific, are making certain YouTube Select lineups available via Google Ads, Display & Video 360 and reservation. Connect with your Google sales team to learn more about the buying methods available in your region.

More certainty in your campaigns

With YouTube Select, you can be confident that your ad buys are brand-safe. You’ll have access to advanced brand suitability controls, as well as the option to only serve ads on videos that have been machine classified and human-verified across all lineups (lineup/market dependent).

Harriet Perry, General Manager at OMG Digital says “For Omnicom Media Group UK, the ability to build relevant and customized content plans to support the unique needs of each of our clients is critical. The YouTube Select product will allow us to achieve this, and will also provide us added controls like human verification and brand measurement. Additionally, we are excited about YouTube Select’s audience and scale on OTT/connected TV devices, which will be a core part of our overall connected TV strategy.”

With more content, capabilities and certainty, YouTube Select offers an easier way for you to authentically connect with your audience at scale. Most importantly, YouTube Select helps drive real results for your business. In 2019, global lineups delivered an average awareness lift of 13 percent and an average purchase intent lift of 9 percent.4 And in an MMM meta-analysis we commissioned with Nielsen in the U.S., YouTube Select lineups had greater ROI than TV in 73 percent of MMMs that measured YouTube Select lineups, Other Digital, and TV in 2016-2018.5

Make the best of YouTube yours with YouTube Select. 

Explore YouTube Select programming on our website. Connect with your Google sales team to learn more about YouTube Select offerings and rollout timing in your region.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Google Marketing | Local Marketing

Promote Curbside Pickup In Your Local Inventory Ads

11 May 2020 by

In today’s rapidly changing environment, people are looking for real-time updates when it comes to store information and product availability. Searches for “in-stock” grew more than 70 percent globally from the week of March 28 to April 4, as consumers sought to avoid ecommerce shipping delays. We’re here to help you connect local shoppers with the products they need quickly, and promote your safer fulfillment options, like in-store and curbside pickup.

Using local inventory ads, retailers can show users that the products they are searching for are available for nearby store pickup. Now, you can indicate if you offer curbside pickup, right in your local inventory ads. This feature is available in the countries where local inventory ads have launched: Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and the U.S.

Petco is using the curbside pickup badge to highlight contactless pickup availability on essential products like pet food and supplies that are available nearby for same-day or next-day pickup. “As a trusted partner in caring for the overall health and wellness of pets, we’re committed to ensuring pet parents have the essential products they need during this time,” said Jay Altschuler, Petco Vice President of Media Transformation. “To make shopping easier and safer for both pet parents and our own employees, we’ve proudly made a number of changes including launching curbside pickup at most Petco stores nationwide.”

The local inventory ads curbside pickup badge is currently in beta and available to advertisers who have completed the onboarding for store pickup. Reach out to your account team if you’re interested in including curbside pickup in your ads, or complete this form.

If you aren’t running local inventory ads, you can still let customers know whether your store offers pickup, delivery, or curbside pickup. Using Google My Business, you can add or edit attributes to your Business Profile that appear on Search and Maps. This is available globally.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Google Marketing | PPC Marketing | Web Marketing

Google Ads For Local Business: 7 Tips & 3 Mistakes

8 May 2020 by
Google Ads For Local Businesses

Did you know that 76% of people who conduct a local search on their smartphone visit a business within 24 hours, and 28% of those searches result in a purchase? As a local business, it’s a top priority for your ads to be seen and used. But to do that, they have to reach their target audience. They also have to be so appealing that they lead that audience straight to a purchase. So how can your business use Google Ads to benefit your customer and sales growth? Here are 7 of the best practices and 3 mistakes to avoid for local businesses using Google Ads.

Local Google Ads Tip - Increase Your Local Reach Radius

1) Increase Your Local Reach Radius

When you’re trying to get a bigger reach for your Google ads, but still want to reach your local customers, make sure your Google location target setting is on “People in, or who show interest in, your targeted locations.” This setting is recommended by Google and will help your business reach an audience that might not be permanently residing in your location. It also can help your ads reach nearby cities. 

While Google Ads can help increase online sales, increasing your local reach radius also can increase off-line sales. Start “Geo-fencing” or learning how far your customers are traveling to visit your physical business. This way, you know how far to set your Google Ads map radius. Consider setting up surveys in your newsletters or receipt emails that ask the area code of your customers. You can also create a system of asking for area codes with physical purchases.

Google Ads For Local Businesses Article Graphics

2) Take Advantage of All Google’s Location Campaigns Types

While making a campaign is simple, there are several ways you can use campaigns to reach different audiences. For example, if you have a candy shop, you might make a campaign that looks like “candy shop near me.” This campaign will attract anyone within a your set radius.

Consider using both of the campaigns below:

[business type] near me

[business type] in [state, city]

Keyword phrases such as “near me” and “on sale” have increased 250% from 2016-2019. On the other hand, specifically mentioning a city or state is key for getting your business’ ads to pop up for non-locals. This group of people may be tourists, travelers, other businesses, and general visitors. Using both of these types of campaigns can greatly impact the response you get from your ad.

Tip: When preparing a Google Ad campaign, be sure to take advantage of Google’s geo-targeted ads, which allows you to pinpoint a target audience that’s as large or small as you want.

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3) Include Location Extensions 

If you’re targeting a local audience, be sure that your ad can take viewers to a map of your business. After all, your ad may reach thousands of people, but if people don’t go to your store or website, the ad is pointless. By including a Location Extension, you allow the ad to connect viewers straight to Google Maps. This practice is especially useful for the many people who are using their cell phones to search for local businesses, as it will help them navigate easily to you.

To add a Location Extension to your Google Ads, simply go to your Google Ads Dashboard and click on the Extensions tab. You’ll then see the option to add Location Extension.

You can also add an Affiliate Location Extension (located directly below Location Extension in the same place). Affiliate Location Extensions showcase affiliates that carry your products. If your products are located in businesses such as Amazon and Target, be sure to add that information here.

Utilizing the Affiliate Location Extension greatly benefits businesses that don’t have their own storefront. By channeling purchases through affiliates, you can increase your audience and sales.

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4) Optimize Bids For Target Location

You’ll want to ensure the bulk of your bid is focused on the areas closest to your business. There are already several aspects of your ad that is set-up to reach a larger radius. Spending your money on the local area ensures that the people who have the most potential to get to your business see your ad. It also ensures that the closest people have the most consistent exposure to your business.

To customize your bid, go to the Location Extension to your Google Ads, on your Google Ads Dashboard. From there you can click your target audience and increase the percent your keywords are optimized for viewers. Select multiple ranges of targets (5 miles, 10 miles, 15 miles), and steadily decrease your bid for each level.

Google Ads For Local Businesses

5) Create Deep Links for Your Ad’s Site Link

While it’s important to make an eye-catching phrase for your ad’s site link, it’s also important to link deep into your site. For those who haven’t deep linked before, it makes sure your audience isn’t led to the homepage, but another page on your site. By deep linking, you drive customers straight into what they’re looking for. Try deep linking to contact pages, sales or events pages, or service pages. If your business sells products, also add an Amazon-style buy button to your deep linked page that will increase your conversation rates by 14%. This way, customers will be led straight to an easy way to buy your product. You could even use this for your business’ services by styling the page’s button after the Amazon button.

If driving in local customers is your goal, be sure to include keywords that would indicate your business is local. Create a landing page that includes positive and local testimonials. Viewers will automatically be able to see the impact you’ve made on the community and become potential customers.

Tip: Google’s artificial intelligence can automatically generate phrases for your ad’s link, but consider writing your own to match your deep link landing page. Just make sure they are interesting and engaging.

Google Ads For Local Businesses

6) Utilize Local Search Ads

Including browsing, researching, and buying, 98% of global consumers shop online. But you also want your potential customers to find your physical business quickly. Instead of taking viewers to your website, Local Search ads lead your audience straight to Google Maps. This feature is especially useful if you need a large influx of local customers quickly. Be sure to enable Location Extensions first (see #3) and optimize bids (see #4). After these two steps are complete, you’ll want to make sure your Google My Business page is updated and correct. If you’re looking for a simpler way, there is also the option to automate your bidding by setting up specific rules.

Another way to increase your business’ presence in the community is by partnering with local organizations and events. When people search for these events and places, they will also be exposed to your business. By making sure your Location Extension and Business Locations are correct, you ensure that potential customers are able to see your location on Google Maps or visit your website.

Google Ads For Local Businesses

7) Keep Track of How Ads Perform and Adjust Accordingly

If you see that one of your ads is doing poorly, don’t be afraid to remove it. While it’s been said that any exposure is good exposure, your money should be reserved for the best performing ads. Use Google Ads to keep track of the number of clicks your ad gets, the revenue generated, how many qualified leads your ad attracts, and more. You can also utilize Google Ads’ Keyword Tracker to see which keywords are attracting the most traffic. Then you can delete the keywords that aren’t generating clicks. At the end of the day, you want to keep what works best for your business and get rid of the rest.

If you are not getting the results you want for the money you’re investing, it may be time to re-evaluate the type of paid ad you’re using. 

Google Ads For Local Businesses

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Best Life Hacks | Blog Marketing | Reputation Marketing | Web Marketing

Amazon Air Purifier Cured My Allergies

3 May 2020 by
The Magic of HEPA

I spend way too much time indoors…

But I’m gonna look like I’m 30 when I’m 60, so it’s worth it. 😉

As a web strategist, much of my time is spent indoors building websites and tending to an avalanche of emails. Hence, the quality of the air matters big time for me.

Did you know that indoor air is five times more polluted than the air outside?

I have always wanted to get an air purifer, but when I looked on Amazon, they all looked so friggin expensive, and I just couldn’t justify spending that much money on it.

After a conversation with a comedian friend of mine, who swore by the effectiveness of his Alen air purifier, I started researching about HEPA filters last month, more seriously in a buying mindset.

My friend said he researched air purifiers and the best one was the Alen BreatheSmart 75i True HEPA Air Purifier. He said to check out the reviews on Amazon, and not to take his word for it.

So I did just that. I researched various air purifiers, and my friend Andrey was totally right about the reviews. The one that I kept coming across with the best reviews was the Alen BreatheSmart 75i True HEPA Air Purifier.

The price? Not so great. >> $349

However, if you are truly interested in obtaining optimal health, and maximizing your energy levels, crushing it with your productivity, then that one-time cost might just be worth it. I went for it, and I am so glad I did!

I took my friend’s recommendation, and bought the Alen BreatheSmart 75i True HEPA Air Purifier which had the most positive, genuine sounding reviews.

…and I am so glad I did!

This air purifier has made a significant improvement in my overall energy levels and health.

Within a couple days of using the air purifier, I found myself breathing better, feeling better and generally very happy about the purchase.

The Magic of HEPA

HEPA is a word that stands for high-efficiency particulate air. It is a mechanical filter that forces air to trap those things that make your allergies go bonkers. It catches all those pollen particles, pet dander, dust, and even cigarette smoke.

My research showed that 99.7 percent of those particles can be trapped by a HEPA filter. Further research from the EPA shows that indoor air is five times more polluted than the air outside. That wasn’t hard for me to believe. That’s where most of my problems are from an allergens perspective.

That magic with HEPA is enough to produce long-term health benefits, or for me, relief from all kinds of indoor allergies.

The Alen Breathe Smart 75i True HEPA Air Purifier

The Alen BreatheSmart is described as the granddaddy of air purifiers in many reviews.

Its performance is exceptional, and its size is just perfect. It purifies large rooms but is very small. It also comes with a lifetime warranty which made me feel better about the cost. That feature alone is considered a big one for this air purifier. A lifetime warranty is not something you are going to find anywhere.

As far as how it is in your room, it’s so quiet that you hardly even know that it is there. This is a purifier that is easy to use and can handle a room up to 1,300 square feet. Yes, a room that size. It is said to remove 99.9 percent of allergens and has additional options for removing smoke and other odors. If it matters to you, it comes in a wide range of colors to accommodate any decor.

Features of the Alen BreatheSmart

The product itself is approximately two feet high and weighs 27 pounds. You will find the air intake vents on the sides of the unit so that you can put it against any wall when it is in use, and even when it isn’t. It comes with wheels so that you can roll it where you need to, as it is fairly heavy.

On the front, you have a panel that is customizable to meet your needs so that you can tell the purifier how much you want it to clean today. The noise level is rated at an amazing 25 decibels which is comparable to a whisper. Even at its highest speed, you may hear your refrigerator more than this purifier. This noise level is referred to as pink noise, which will also help you to sleep better.

Energy-wise you are looking at a purifier that only consumes 45 watts. Yes, that means you have light bulbs that are more energy-costly. Even so, there are features that allow you to adjust the power modes to auto to save even more power. A timer is also added into this model, which allows you to set it and forget it, or have it turn on when you are cooking.

Another feature I loved included the intuitive interface. This had seven buttons that could easily be programmed. Turn it on or off with a single button, or put it on auto. On auto, it cycles through all five settings without you having to think about it. 

Other buttons included are a child lock button, which helps if you have little ones around. They won’t be able to play with its pretty interface. The power switch is right in the center, with a circular indicator letting you know how clean the air is as it is in use. Blue means the air is clean or of excellent quality, purple is not a great color. You may even turn it on and realize that the air is already clean enough, or that it really needs a good clean based on this color.

As far as filters are concerned you have the true HEPA filter, the Fresh filter for extra absorption, and the pet and heavy filters for allergens, odors, and pathogens. You’re never going to be confused about whether this purifier is working.

To add to it, you have a lifetime warranty and excellent customer service. As intuitive as this purifier is, I still called the customer service line for help setting it up and understanding the filters and the call was quick and easy.

Start Purifying With BreatheSmart

I love that this is a smart product in that this makes it all very easy to figure out. I can easily see why this is the purifier that everybody is raving about online.

Every purifier wants to be this one. This is why it is so expensive, not because it is popular, but because it is an excellent product. Not many will tell you in advance whether the room even needs to be purified or not.

It blends in any room, and it works very quietly. And it works amazing! I’ve already started to notice a difference in my energy levels. The air in my room smells like fresh outdoor air you would smell when you are camping in the wilderness.

If you work inside like me, it’s time to start purifying! It makes a big difference with your energy levels and will make you more productive. It did for me! : )

Hope you enjoyed geeking out on air purifiers with me in this post. Tell me in the comments which air purifier you’ve found to be the best one? I’d love to hear your comments.

Google Marketing

Stopping Bad Ads To Protect Users

30 April 2020 by

People trust Google when they’re looking for information, and we’re committed to ensuring they can trust the ads they see on our platforms, too. This commitment is especially important in times of uncertainty, such as the past few months as the world has confronted COVID-19. 

Responding to COVID-19

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, we’ve closely monitored advertiser behavior to protect users from ads looking to take advantage of the crisis. These often come from sophisticated actors attempting to evade our enforcement systems with advanced tactics. For example, as the situation evolved, we saw a sharp spike in fraudulent ads for in-demand products like face masks. These ads promoted products listed significantly above market price, misrepresented the product quality to trick people into making a purchase or were placed by merchants who never fulfilled the orders. 

We have a dedicated COVID-19 task force that’s been working around the clock. They have built new detection technology and have also improved our existing enforcement systems to stop bad actors. These concerted efforts are working. We’ve blocked and removed tens of millions of coronavirus-related ads over the past few months for policy violations including price-gouging, capitalizing on global medical supply shortages, making misleading claims about cures and promoting illegitimate unemployment benefits.

Simultaneously, the coronavirus has become an important and enduring topic in everyday conversation and we’re working on ways to allow advertisers across industries to share relevant updates with their audiences. Over the past several weeks, for example, we’ve specifically helped NGOs, governments, hospitals and healthcare providers run PSAs. We continue to take a measured approach to adjusting our enforcement to ensure that we are protecting users while prioritizing critical information from trusted advertisers.

Preserving the integrity of the ecosystem

Preserving the integrity of the ads on our platforms, as we’re doing during the COVID-19 outbreak, is a continuation of the work we do every day to minimize content that violates our policies and stop malicious actors. We have thousands of people working across our teams to make sure we’re protecting our users and enabling a safe ecosystem for advertisers and publishers, and each year we share a summary of the work we’ve done.

In 2019, we blocked and removed 2.7 billion bad ads—that’s more than 5,000 bad ads per minute. We also suspended nearly 1 million advertiser accounts for policy violations. On the publisher side, we terminated over 1.2 million accounts and removed ads from over 21 million web pages that are part of our publisher network for violating our policies. Terminating accounts—not just removing an individual ad or page—is an especially effective enforcement tool that we use if advertisers or publishers engage in egregious policy violations or have a history of violating policy.

Improving enforcement against phishing and “trick-to-click” ads 

If we find specific categories of ads are more prone to abuse, we prioritize our resources to prevent bad actors from taking advantage of users. One of the areas that we’ve become familiar with is phishing, a common practice used by deceptive players to collect personal information from users under false pretenses. For example, in 2019 we saw more bad actors targeting people seeking to renew their passport. These ads mimicked real ads for renewal sites but their actual intent was to get users to provide sensitive information such as their social security or credit card number. Another common area of abuse is “trick-to-click” ads—which are designed to trick people into interacting with them by using prominent links (for example, “click here”) often designed to look like computer or mobile phone system warnings.

Because we’ve come to expect certain recurring categories like phishing and “trick-to-click,” we’re able to more effectively fight them. In 2019, we assembled an internal team to track the patterns and signals of these types of fraudulent advertisers so we could identify and remove their ads faster. As a result, we saw nearly a 50 percent decrease of bad ads served in both categories from the previous year. In total, we blocked more than 35 million phishing ads and 19 million “trick-to-click” ads in 2019.

Adapting our policies and technology in real time

Certain industries are particularly susceptible to malicious behavior. For example, as more consumers turn to online financial services over brick and mortar locations, we identified an increase in personal loan ads with misleading information on lending terms. To combat this, we broadened our policy to only allow loan-related ads to run if the advertiser clearly states all fees, risks and benefits on their website or app so that users can make informed decisions. This updated policy enabled us to take down 9.6 million of these types of bad ads in 2019, doubling our number from 2018. 

At the end of last year, we also introduced a certification program for debt management advertisers in select countries that offer to negotiate with creditors to remedy debt or credit problems. We know users looking for help with this are often at their most vulnerable and we want to create a safe experience for them. This new program ensures we’re only allowing advertisers who are registered by the local regulatory agencies to serve ads for this type of service. We’re continuing to explore ways to scale this program to more countries to match local finance regulations. 

Looking forward

Maintaining trust in the digital advertising ecosystem is a top priority for Google. And with global health concerns now top of mind for everyone, preparing for and responding to attempts to take advantage of our users is as important as it has ever been. We know abuse tactics will continue evolving and new societal issues will arise. We’ll continue to make sure we’re protecting our users, advertisers and publishers from bad actors across our advertising platforms. 

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Google Marketing | Youtube Marketing

It’s Faster And Easier To Use Ads Data Hub

16 April 2020 by

Advertisers tell us that understanding the business impact of their marketing is more important than ever. But they also report that it’s becoming more difficult as the industry—in response to growing concerns about privacy—changes its practices around how data is collected and used. Ads Data Hub enables customized analysis of your Google ad campaigns while protecting user privacy and upholding Google’s high standards of data security.

Today, we’re providing an update on improvements to Ads Data Hub that help you analyze data more quickly and easily, better understand the way that people interact with your ads, and use insights from your data to reach the right customers. With these updates, you can tailor your measurement to your unique business needs, understand how your marketing is performing, and drive the greatest business impact.

Improvements to help you analyze your data faster and easier

Over the past year, we’ve been investing in the infrastructure that underlies Ads Data Hub to make it available to a larger number of customers and simplify the process of writing queries. Over 200 brands, agencies and measurement partners are actively using Ads Data Hub today. And usage continues to increase, with successful queries up over 145 percent in 2019 compared to 2018. But we’ve heard from customers that we need to make it faster and easier to run analysis.

In the coming weeks, we’ll add self-service account linking for Google Ads, Campaign Manager, and Display & Video 360, so you can more easily access your Google ad campaign data across multiple products in a secure, privacy-centric environment. This includes allowing you to create multi-tier account structures, which adds flexibility to how brands and agencies can configure ads data within Ads Data Hub to address unique account hierarchies and user access requirements.

We’re making it easier to run analysis with a Sandbox environment, which recently rolled out to all customers. This environment includes a test dataset and can be used to experiment with data and query development, which can help make execution faster by giving you a better understanding of the types of queries you can write and insights you can get in Ads Data Hub.

We’ve also launched a new query library that gives you access to over 20 templates for the most common types of analysis run in Ads Data Hub. For example, the All events template can be used to get impressions, clicks, conversions and Active View stats for a specific account. Ads Data Hub users can also suggest new templates directly via the in-product feedback form.

  • NoneQuery templates help you write and run queries for the most common types of analysis
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A frequent request we’ve heard from customers is to be able to access and analyze ad data closer to real-time. To address this, we’ve brought latency down from 24-48 hours to 6 hours for display and YouTube ads data from Google Ads, as well as for data from YouTube ads bought via Display & Video 360. That means, if an impression was served at 8am, you can query data associated with that impression from 2pm on the same day.

New ways to understand the consumer journey

Manually stitching together event-level data from Campaign Manager and Display & Video 360 to reconstruct the path to purchase is possible today in Ads Data Hub, but it can be time-consuming and difficult. That’s why we’ve introduced consumer journey paths, a set of pre-processed data that automatically join impression, click, and conversion events together if they’re part of a single journey. This will help advertisers get valuable insights about the consumer journey faster and with higher quality output than manual approaches, and is available to all Ads Data Hub customers that have Campaign Manager and Display & Video 360 data enabled in their account.

To cover more of the ways people interact with media and your brand, we’re expanding beyond computer, mobile and tablet device measurement to include TV screens. This includes coverage for connected TV and gaming consoles. These devices are becoming a bigger part of many media plans, so understanding their role in delivering value for your business is also becoming more important.

Today, Ads Data Hub includes key advertising metrics such as viewability, impressions, clicks, and conversions from display and video ads in Google Ads, Campaign Manager, and Display & Video 360. And in the coming months we’re enabling more measurement use cases by adding advanced Active View metrics for YouTube—including viewability and audibility metrics—that allow you to uncover deep insights into creative performance and user attention.

Reach the right customers with customized audience list creation

Beyond measurement, one of biggest pieces of feedback we’ve heard from customers is that they’d like to take action on the insights they uncover in Ads Data Hub, while protecting user privacy. We’ve begun a test to allow a limited group of customers to build audience lists based on clicks or conversions from Google Ads, Campaign Manager, and Display & Video 360, and use these audience lists to inform who sees display ads in Google Ads and Display & Video 360. For example, you could create an audience list in Ads Data Hub of users that have already purchased your product, then use that as an exclusion list to ensure you don’t continue to show them your ads served via Google Ads and Display & Video 360.

User privacy protections are deeply embedded across all of these features, and—as always—there’s an aggregation requirement for output of any data from Ads Data Hub. Over time, we’ll continue to evolve the capabilities of Ads Data Hub by providing access to additional ads datasets and developing deeper integrations across our ad platforms.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Google Marketing

How To Pause Your Business Online In Google Search

26 March 2020 by

As the effects of the coronavirus grow, we’ve seen businesses around the world looking for ways to pause their activities online. With the outlook of coming back and being present for your customers, here’s an overview of our recommendations of how to pause your business online and minimize impacts with Google Search. These recommendations are applicable to any business with an online presence, but particularly for those who have paused the selling of their products or services online. For more detailed information, also check our developer documentation.

Recommended: limit site functionality 

If your situation is temporary and you plan to reopen your online business, we recommend keeping your site online and limiting the functionality. For example, you might mark items as out of stock, or restrict the cart and checkout process. This is the recommended approach since it minimizes any negative effects on your site’s presence in Search. People can still find your products, read reviews, or add wishlists so they can purchase at a later time.

It’s also a good practice to:

  • Disable the cart functionality: Disabling the cart functionality is the simplest approach, and doesn’t change anything for your site’s visibility in Search.
  • Tell your customers what’s going on: Display a banner or popup div with appropriate information for your users, so that they’re aware of the business’s status. Mention any known and unusual delays, shipping times, pick-up or delivery options, etc. upfront, so that users continue with the right expectations. Make sure to follow our guidelines on popups and banners.
  • Update your structured data: If your site uses structured data (such as Products, Books, Events), make sure to adjust it appropriately (reflecting the current product availability, or changing events to cancelled). If your business has a physical storefront, update Local Business structured data to reflect current opening hours.
  • Check your Merchant Center feed: If you use Merchant Center, follow the best practices for the availability attribute.
  • Tell Google about your updates: To ask Google to recrawl a limited number of pages (for example, the homepage), use Search Console. For a larger number of pages (for example, all of your product pages), use sitemaps.

For more information, check our developers documentation.

Not recommended: disabling the whole website 

As a last resort, you may decide to disable the whole website. This is an extreme measure that should only be taken for a very short period of time (a few days at most), as it will otherwise have significant effects on the website in Search, even when implemented properly. That’s why it’s highly recommended to only limit your site’s functionality instead. Keep in mind that your customers may also want to find information about your products, your services, and your company, even if you’re not selling anything right now.

If you decide that you need to do this (again, which we don’t recommend), here are some options:

  • If you need to urgently disable the site for 1-2 days, then return an informational error page with a 503 HTTP result code instead of all content. Make sure to follow the best practices for disabling a site.
  • If you need to disable the site for a longer time, then provide an indexable homepage as a placeholder for users to find in Search by using the 200 HTTP status code.
  • If you quickly need to hide your site in Search while you consider the options, you can temporarily remove it from Search.

For more information, check our developers documentation.

Proceed with caution: To elaborate why we don’t recommend disabling the whole website, here are some of the side effects:

  • Your customers won’t know what’s happening with your business if they can’t find your business online at all.
  • Your customers can’t find or read first-hand information about your business and its products & services. For example, reviews, specs, past orders, repair guides, or manuals won’t be findable. Third-party information may not be as correct or comprehensive as what you can provide. This often also affects future purchase decisions.
  • Knowledge Panels may lose information, like contact phone numbers and your site’s logo.
  • Search Console verification will fail, and you will lose all access to information about your business in Search. Aggregate reports in Search Console will lose data as pages are dropped from the index.
  • Ramping back up after a prolonged period of time will be significantly harder if your website needs to be reindexed first. Additionally, it’s uncertain how long this would take, and whether the site would appear similarly in Search afterwards.

Other things to consider 

Beyond the operation of your web site, there are other actions you might want to take to pause your online business in Google Search:

Also be sure to keep up with the latest by following updates on Twitter from Google Webmasters at @GoogleWMC and Google My Business at @GoogleMyBiz.

FAQs 

What if I only close the site for a few weeks?

Completely closing a site even for just a few weeks can have negative consequences on Google’s indexing of your site. We recommend limiting the site functionality instead. Keep in mind that users may also want to find information about your products, your services, and your company, even if you’re currently not selling anything.

What if I want to exclude all non-essential products?

That’s fine. Make sure that people can’t buy the non-essential products by limiting the site functionality.

Can I ask Google to crawl less during this time?

Yes, you can limit crawling with Search Console, though it’s not recommended for most cases. This may have some impact on the freshness of your results in Search. For example, it may take longer for Search to reflect that all of your products are currently not available. On the other hand, if Googlebot’s crawling causes critical server resource issues, this is a valid approach. We recommend setting a reminder for yourself to reset the crawl rate once you start planning to go back in business.

How do I get a page indexed or updated quickly?

To ask Google to recrawl a limited number of pages (for example, the homepage), use Search Console. For a larger number of pages (for example, all of your product pages), use sitemaps.

What if I block a specific region from accessing my site?

Google generally crawls from the US, so if you block the US, Google Search generally won’t be able to access your site at all. We don’t recommend that you block an entire region from temporarily accessing your site; instead, we recommend limiting your site’s functionality for that region.

Should I use the Removals Tool to remove out-of-stock products?

No. People won’t be able to find first-hand information about your products on Search, and there might still be third-party information for the product that may be incorrect or incomplete. It’s better to still allow that page, and mark it out of stock. That way people can still understand what’s going on, even if they can’t purchase the item. If you remove the product from Search, people don’t know why it’s not there.

We realize that any business closure is a big and stressful step, and not everyone will know what to do. If you notice afterwards that you could have done something differently, everything’s not lost: we try to make our systems robust so that your site will be back in Search as quickly as possible. Like you, we’re hoping that this crisis finds an end as soon as possible. We hope that with this information, you’re able to have your online business up & running quickly when that time comes. Should you run into any problems or questions along the way, please don’t hesitate to use our public channels to get help.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

Google Marketing

How To Showcase Your Events On Google Search

25 February 2020 by

It’s officially 2020 and people are starting to make plans for the year ahead. If you produce any type of event, you can help people discover your events with the event search experience on Google.

Have a concert or hosting a workshop? Event markup allows people to discover your event when they search for “concerts this weekend” or “workshops near me.” People can also discover your event when they search for venues, such as sports stadiums or a local pub. Events may surface in a given venue’s Knowledge Panel to better help people find out what’s happening at that respective location.

Launching in new regions and languages 

We recently launched the event search experience in Germany and Spain, which brings the event search experience on Google to nine countries and regions around the world. For a full list of where the event search experience works, check out the list of available languages and regions.

How to get your events on Google 

There are three options to make your events eligible to appear on Google:

  • If you use a third-party website to post events (for example, you post events on ticketing websites or social platforms), check to see if your event publisher is already participating in the event search experience on Google. One way to check is to search for a popular event shown on the platform and see if the event listing is shown. If your event publisher is integrated with Google, continue to post your events on the third-party website.
  • If you use a CMS (for example, WordPress) and you don’t have access to your HTML, check with your CMS to see if there’s a plugin that can add structured data to your site for you. Alternatively, you can use the Data Highlighter to tell Google about your events without editing the HTML of your site.
  • If you’re comfortable editing your HTML, use structured data to directly integrate with Google. You’ll need to edit the HTML of the event pages.

Follow best practices 

If you’ve already implemented event structured data, we recommend that you review your structured data to make sure it meets our guidelines. In particular, you should:

  • Make sure you’re including the required and recommended properties that are outlined in our developer guidelines.
  • Make sure your event details are high quality, as defined by our guidelines. For example, use the description field to describe the event itself in more detail instead of repeating attributes such as title, date, location, or highlighting other website functionality.
  • Use the Rich Result Test to test and preview your structured data.

You can check how people are interacting with your event postings with Search Console:

If you have any questions, please visit the Webmaster Central Help Forum.

Source: Official Google Webmasters Blog

SEO Marketing | Web Marketing

The Impact of GDPR on Digital Marketing

10 January 2020 by
The Impact of the GDPR on Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is a multidimensional industry that utilizes a vast amount of consumer data.

As a result, a well-implemented regulatory framework is required to ensure that consumer protection remains a high priority. Measures such as the California Consumer Privacy Act have been established in the local and global legal community to necessitate the urgent need for data privacy and protection in the digital marketing process.

The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was enacted and made applicable on 25 May 2018. This regulatory framework’s main aim is to protect an individual’s right to protection of their data, and it clarifies the process that companies need to follow to safeguard the rights of an individual who is a data subject.

There are many surprising benefits that compliance with the GDPR can bring to businesses.

For instance, it can provide enhanced cybersecurity measures because, since its implementation, GDPR has propelled digital businesses to enhance their data privacy and influenced the development of their security systems and practices.

Moreover, when companies adapt their data protection regulations, they can naturally build customer trust and loyalty.

But has the GDPR achieved its purpose? And if so, what new developments have been made since its inception into the digital business market in 2018?

Keep reading this article to find out more about the importance of this piece of legislation, the impact of the GDPR particularly in the digital marketing industry, and new developments in cross-border data transfers that could change the face of digital marketing.

The Impact of the GDPR on Digital Marketing

Why Is the GDPR Important for the Digital Marketing Industry?

GDPR has provided digital marketing with core benefits that have ensured to improve its overall performance by making it more efficient to personalize its product offering by providing customers the consent to allow businesses to utilize their data for marketing purposes.

The rules that are outlined in this regulatory provision require companies to comply with data audit processes that are essential to creating compelling and more personalized offers.

This has ensured that companies align with data-driven marketing strategies. As a result, more companies are raising their marketing profile by taking the lead towards developing the culture of data privacy that is required by the GDPR. 

By providing consumers with the option to opt into and out of their data being used for advertising, companies have more opportunities to enhance the data collected to communicate with their most valuable customers as well as prospective customers.

Having customers that are already engaged, ensures that sales get more qualified leads which benefits these companies by eliminating time spent on chasing leads, which inevitably increases productivity and sales. 

GDPR Websites

The Impact So Far

Individual user data has been utilized as a part of contemporary marketing strategies that rely on the use of personal data as a primary revenue source for digital marketing companies.

This increase in the use of personal data to generate leads and sales contributed to the implementation of the GDPR.

There are key principles that include lawfulness, fairness, and transparency that are set out at the beginning of the GDPR that require compliance as a fundamental component for the use of data. The main responsibility that digital marketing faces lie in the initial process of collecting data.

Before its enactment, companies could collect data without consent and use it for their marketing purposes. However, since the GDPR was enacted companies are not allowed to collect data as they please due to key issues that impact this process such as legal bases for the processing of data, obtaining consent, and the opting-in and out option.

Consequently, when companies use data to target sales, this data has to be collected and processed by the provisions of the GDPR particularly the seven key principles that are outlined in this piece of legislation. This has impacted the digital marketing industry by necessitating a legal basis for data collection by requiring companies to provide established privacy policies.

An evaluation report conducted and published by the European Commission in 2020 highlighted that the GDPR has met the majority of its objectives and that it has provided essential security solutions in unforeseeable circumstances that have forced the world to rely on data to propel businesses towards the digital economy.

More businesses have developed a compliance mechanism and utilize robust data protection as part of their competitive advantage strategy. Additionally, more consumers are aware of their data protection rights and use the opt-in and out option to preserve their data privacy rights. 

GDPR Websites

What New Developments Can the Digital Industry Expect?

The untimely pandemic in 2020 brought about many changes to the world of data protection regulation for the digital marketing industry.

The most notable of these developments was the California Consumer Privacy Act that was enacted in January 2020 which resulted in the ruling that the EU-US privacy shield was invalid rendering it unenforceable to maintain a free flow of data between these countries.

This ruling has highlighted that the transfer of sensitive consumer data is a high priority that needs to be adhered to by all parties.

Many countries are embarking on adopting and reviewing their cross-border privacy policies to ensure that they are compliant with the standardization and regulatory requirements as prescribed by the GDPR.

The European Data Protection Board has published draft recommendations containing rules that companies should abide by to lawfully transfer sensitive data information.

These developments are set to impact the manner that international companies collect and process data from EU citizens and uphold strict regulations for compliance with cross-border transfers.

The developments envisioned for data privacy protection will ensure that many countries enforce privacy laws and that they are in line with the new cross-border standards that are set out by the GDPR. 

What Are the Similarities with the CCPA?

These two pieces of legislation have similar principles and expectations when it comes to the protection of data subjects by providing them with the right to obtain and view personal data that companies have collected from them.

They both require businesses to disclose how they utilize personal data from subjects and cybersecurity security measures that provide data subjects with the option to have their collected data deleted from the archives.

Even though some businesses are not obliged to comply with both laws, failure to comply with one of these regulations can institute civil penalties. 

The Impact of the GDPR on Digital Marketing


The Bottom Line 

GDPR and other regulatory frameworks such as the CCPA have provided data subjects protection of their fundamental right to privacy by ensuring that companies comply with key principles such as transparency when collecting data.

Similarly, digital marketing has acquired a myriad of advantages aimed at defining its competitive edge. Compliance with GDPR requirements and taking appropriate measures that are designed to protect consumer data promote meaningful customer engagements and drive traffic of valuable prospects to your business.

So, if you are having trouble with maneuvering the drawbacks of these regulations, it would be in your company’s best interest to understand the core principles and advantages of incorporating the rules as set out in both the GDPR and CCPA to enhance your business strategy into the future success of your brand. 

The Impact of the GDPR on Digital Marketing
The Impact of the GDPR on Digital Marketing

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