Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.
Search Engine Roundtable Stories:
Advertiser: Google Smart Shopping Campaigns Can Report Fake Revenues
Kirk Williams posted a warning that if you are using the new customer acquisition goals in Google Smart Shopping Campaigns, Google might show you revenue that is not real. The issue is that you set how much is the value of a new customer, and Google will add that value on top of any real revenue you get from the ad click.
Google Responds To Exact Match Domain Not Ranking For Christmas Trees
Got to say, this is an unusual response from Google’s John Mueller. In short, someone with an exact match domain asked John why his site is not ranking for its brand name. The web site domain has Christmas Trees in it and the search query he shared a screen shot of showed product listing ads and other ads but not his web site ranking (note, it did not show organic results).
Google: XML Sitemaps Are A Minimal Baseline For Any Serious Website
Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter that having an XML Sitemap file is “a minimal baseline for any serious website.” Basically, all serious websites should have an XML sitemap file part of it or it is not a serious website.
Bing Does Not Know Its Ranking Signal Weights – Machines Learning Deals With It
Izzi Smith and Marcus Tandler in their 302 of a Kind weekly SEO video chat interviewed Microsoft’s Fabrice Canel. In that interview Fabrice Canel explained that he and no one really knows the individual weights of the ranking signals used at Bing because they are all handled by machine learning.
Video On Google Search Quality Evaluators/Raters
Google has released a short video on how Search Quality Evaluators help Google make Google Search better. I assume this is part of Google trying to debunk some myths and get the word out that these Search Quality Evaluators do not manually impact the search results, at least not directly.
Google Spoke Chairs
Here is a recent photo I found on Instagram from the main Google office, aka the GooglePlex. It is of a Google colored chair, I think it is called a spoke chair, I can be wrong.
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
AdSense in a subfolder / subdirectory site?, WebmasterWorld
Are you saying Googlebot is being too socially distant? 🙂 I’m not aware of any specific issues with indexing. Can you elaborate? Do you have some examples? Thanks!, John Mueller on Twitter
There are still sites that don’t use sitemaps? Seems like a much simpler fix than to manually submit every new or updated URL …, John Mueller on Twitter
Search Engine Land Stories:
How Autodesk overhauled its marketing to align for better performance management
How to show Lighthouse Scores in Google Sheets with a custom function
Don’t miss out on up to $100 off Search Marketing Expo
Other Great Search Stories:
Analytics
Bulk Actions With Google Tag Manager Triggers, Simo Ahava’s blog
Industry & Business
India opens antitrust case against Google over its payments app, TechCrunch
Job opportunity: Google Web Creators…needs you!, Paul Bakaus’ blog
Links & Content Marketing
On SERP Suggestions for Content Marketers, Siege Media
Local & Maps
Google tests letting anyone add Street View imagery with just their phone, Android Police
Mobile & Voice
Scottish Police Propose Allowing Crime Reports Through Alexa and Siri, Voicebot
SEO
16 Essential SEO Tips for Beginners to Boost Traffic, SEM Rush
Big data shows the volatility of Featured Snippets, Kevin Indig
Search Term Report Changes: 3 Ways To Supplement Lost Search Term Data, Go Fish Digital
What’s the current state of play in marketing and search?, DeepCrawl
Behind the SEO: Launching Our New Guide – How to Rank, Moz
PPC
4 Pillars of Paid Media Growth, PPC Hero
Announcing v6 of the Google Ads API, Google Ads Developer Blog
Data Privacy & Compliance Guide to Managing Your Google Analytics Data, Seer Interactive
Facebook and Google are still banning political ads. Dems say that’s bad news for the Georgia runoffs., Protocol
How to Measure Google Ads Sitelink Performance, Portent
Read This Before Using New Customer Acquisition Goals in Google Smart Shopping Campaigns, ZATO Marketing
