Bear with us, please, as we indulge in some recycling: “Though Google AdWords is a leading digital marketing tool, tweaks are consistent,” we wrote back in August. “It’s important to keep an eye on these changes to ensure it is being used at full potential.” Just such an occurrence happened over the past seven days. Three announcements directly related Google’s SEM and PPC platforms. Here they are:
Bear with us, please, once more. When we first told you (earlier this year) of Google and WordPress’ new joint efforts, we told you their union was in the name of page speed. Then, we noticed that page speed was getting a lot of media mentions as initiatives such as this one and Google’s other side hustle, AMP, rolled out new features.
It’s Groundhog Day all over again as yet another feature relating to AMP (more so) and page speed (less so, but still so) is coming your way. On Monday, Google announced the broad launch of mobile-first indexing. Indexing refers to how Google keeps tabs on all the web content in the world. Traditionally, this would occur through the scan of desktop web pages. Courtesy of this announcement, Google will focus on the mobile version of web content. This is yet another reminder of just how important it is to deliver a quality mobile experience.
In another announcement from Mountain View, California, the search juggernaut presented a small tweak to their PPC offering, Google AdWords. When a PPC marketer would create a variation of their ad via the platform, Google would remove the previous edition. Now, the platform will keep tabs on edit history. What does this mean for PPC marketers? Search Engine Land sums it up nicely.
“If you’re one to edit ads in AdWords rather than pause or remove old ads, then add new ones, now you can easily compare all those old ad variations.” We’ll throw ourselves into this category so: how will this help us deliver you with better performing ads? We are always pouring over the data for ad campaigns we create in Google AdWords. If it’s not performing to our (admittedly high) standards, we’re going to ask why. We’ll tweak everything from a misplaced comma to overly narrow audience targeting. With this AdWords tweak, this will become eve\n more efficient.
Google’s SEM and PPC platforms added surveys to their repertoire in 2012. The launch of Google Consumer Surveys, as it was called at the time, was led by an aim “to put quality market research in the hands of businesses of all sizes.” Over the next six or so years, the offering has grown. As such, the newest update was presented last week.
Google announced they will be taking the feature global in 2018. The ability to gain international consumer knowledge is pretty cool but don’t just take our word for it. Google put together a video to share their excitement.