AdWords Testing Click-to-Text Feature

AdWords is testing a new extension, click-to-message ads, where users have the option to text a business about a particular product or service.

According to a post on the AdWords blog, ‘’tapping on the texting option launches a user’s SMS app with a pre-written message tailored to the product or service they’re interested in. For example, if you’re a travel advertiser and someone messages you after searching for New York City hotels, they can send or edit your pre-written message text, ‘’I’m interested in a reservation. Please text me back with more information.’’ ‘’.

Click-to-ad messages are bringing the effectiveness of messaging to search ads.

AdWords Product Listing Ads in New Carousel

Google’s Product Listing Ads are now showing at the top of search results in carousel format. This change has been made to searchers in the US but it is likely to go international at a later stage.

If searchers want to see all results, the view all will direct to the Google Shopping page where a full list of results can be found.

Bing Ads Redesigns Creation Interface

A major redesign of the Bing Ads user interface is changing the way advertisers create new campaigns on the platform. According to the announcement from Bing Ads, here are some of the new changes.

• Campaign Goals: When creating a new campaign, Bing Ads will ask you to pick a marketing goal for example, visits to my website, visits to my business location(s), conversions in my website, phone calls to my business, and sell products with Bing Shopping Campaigns. Entering the marketing goal will allow Bing to recommend different features and defaults.
• Copy Campaign Settings and Location Targeting: Bing now makes it easier to copy settings from another campaign. Simply check the box next to ‘’use campaign settings from another campaign’’ and then select from your previous Bing Ad campaigns. Bing Ads is also making it easier for you to choose specific locations where you want your ads to appear. To do this, simply enter the country/region, state/province or zip/postcode into the search box and add the locations you want.
• Keyword Recommendations: Bing Ads now offer improved keyword suggestions to help you target the right search results. For example, these suggestions can be based on a URL from your website. Bing will automatically group keywords for you into ad groups based on relevance. By organising keywords into multiple ad groups, you can better target your ad copy and your bids to the different search queries you want to show up.

AdWords Introduces AdWords Editor 11

AdWords Editor has been redesigned to make it even easier to navigate and manage your account. The new update includes:

• Type list: Change the data view with the type list.
• Pop-out windows: View and edit different parts of your account at the same time.
• More powerful accounts manager: Download multiple accounts at the same time, or download entire MCC accounts.
• Open multiple accounts: Compare, view and edit more than once account at the same time.
• Multi-select items: View and paste items into multiple campaigns for ad groups.
• Make multiple changes: Automatically organises your data into rows and columns for bulk edits.
• Undo and redo multiple changes: Undo or redo changes you’ve made in succession.
• Smarter search: Search with filters, multiple search criteria, saved changes, and more.
• Keyword shortcuts: Perform common tasks and navigate through your account quickly with shortcuts.
• Shared library: Access shared bidding strategies and sitelinks.

Google to create a separate mobile index

Google’s Gary Illyes announced the launch of a separate mobile only index which will become the primary index that the search engine uses to respond to queries. A separate desktop index will be maintained, but it will not be as up-to-date as the mobile index.

Google announced the idea of a mobile index last year. Since then, Google has clearly decided to move ahead and launch the idea.

The sitelink demotion tool within Google Search Console has been removed

In 2007, Google added a feature to Search Console to allow webmasters to remove specific URLS as sitelinks from showing in the search results snippets.

Google announced on Google+ that they’ve decided to remove this feature. According to the announcement, Google are doing this in order to simplify things.

Google said: ‘’we only show sitelinks for results when we think they’ll be useful to the user. If the structure of your site doesn’t allow our algorithms to find good sitelinks, or we don’t think that the sitelinks for your site are relevant for the user’s query, we won’t show them. This process is completely automated. Sitelinks have evolved into being based on traditional web ranking, so the way to influence them is the same as other web pages.’’

Google provided three best practices for webmasters for sitelinks they don’t want to show up.

• Provide a clear structure for your website using relevant internal links and anchor text that’s informative, compact, and avoids repetition.
• Allow Google to crawl and index important pages within your site. Use Fetch and Render to check that they can be rendered properly.
• If you need to remove a page from search completely, use a ‘noindex’ robots Meta tag on that page.

Google launches AMP testing tool

Google launched an AMP testing tool to ensure that your AMP implementation is working as expected.

This new tool is mobile friendly and uses Google’s live web search infrastructure to analyse the AMP page with the real Googlebot (Google’s web crawling bot that discovers new and updated pages and adds them to the Google index).

The tool tests the validity of the AMP mark up as well as any structured data on the page.

Google local search is likely to become targeted thanks to new patent

According to Search Engine Journal, a patent granted to Google suggests the company has future plans to track where you are at all times of the day.

According to the patent application, using raw GPS data is not sufficient at determining a user’s exact location. In addition to GPS location, the following will also be used to determine the exact locations you’ve been throughout the day:

Search history, emails sent and received, photographs taken, requests for directions, social media posts, receipts from mobile payments.

New opportunities have emerged for Google My Business listings

Google have added a new feature to Google My Business which allows users to edit attributes for businesses using the bulk upload spreadsheet.

Attributes include adding a URL for example a restaurant’s menu and other pieces of information that may be helpful to customers such as ‘’has WI FI’’ or ‘’suitable for vegans’’.

Twitter discontinuing Vine video app

Twitter announced that Vine, its social media video-sharing app and platform, will be discontinued in the coming months.

The company made the announcement in a blog post to which they added ‘’nothing is happening to the app, website or your Vines today. We value you, your Vines, and are going to do this the right way. You’ll be able to access and download your Vines. We’ll be keeping the website online because we think it’s important to still be able to watch all the incredible Vines that have been made. You’ll be notified before we make any changes to the app or website’’.

Twitter announces job cuts

Twitter is planning to cut 9% of its global workforce, about 350 jobs, the same percentage it did last year when co-founder Jack Dorsey took over as CEO.

CEO Jack Dorsey said ‘we have a clear plan, and we’re making the necessary changes to ensure Twitter is positioned for long-term growth’’.

10 Tips on Having a Holly Jolly #PPC Campaign

In this article, Search Engine Journal offers some tips and tricks for PPC best practices during the festive season. For example, take a look back at least year – look back at previous campaigns to see what keywords, bids and dates were the most effective in driving traffic and conversions.’’ Read the full article below.

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/10-tips-holly-jolly-ppc-campaign/143549/?utm_content=buffer230c5&utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkedin.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Content Gating: When, Whether, and How to Put Your Content Behind an Email/Form Capture

In this Whiteboard Friday, Rand Fishkin discusses the pros and cons of content gating.  Check it out at the link below:

https://moz.com/blog/content-gating-whiteboard-friday?utm_content=bufferfce87&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

How to Filter Millions of Articles Daily to Curate the Content You Need

There a millions of articles published every day and the volume of content is growing. In this article, Steve Rayson discusses how you can use the free Anders Pink content curation tool to filter millions of articles every day to curate just the content you need. Read the full article below:

http://blog.anderspink.com/2016/10/how-to-filter-millions-of-articles-daily-to-curate-the-content-you-need/

• Richard at 3XE & Photos
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BBC World Questions Comes to Ireland

BBC World Questions is coming to Dublin in November to discuss the big issues facing Ireland post Brexit.

When: Wednesday 9^th November

Where: The Printworks, Dublin Castle

Time: 6 pm

Price: Free

Register here: https://www.eventsforce.net/britishcouncil/frontend/reg/thome.csp?pageID=196751&eventID=551&traceRedir=2&eventID=551

C-Suite Summit

The C-Summit returns for another year and the theme for this year’s event is ‘’Embedding Marketing & Innovation in the Boardroom’’. A panel of leading international and Irish speakers will share their insights and expertise about the importance of marketing and innovation in today’s rapidly changing business environment

When: Tuesday 29^th November

Where: Intercontinental Hotel, Dublin

Price: €495

For more information visit http://www.csuite.ie/

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