In 2019, Google shook up mobile search results pages with a redesign that introduced black “Ad” labels to text ads and favicons for organic listings. It also caused a stir in notifying some advertisers it would start handling campaign management for them. Automation continued to be a major theme. This year, it was reflected most…
DetailsThe IRS has revised its Free File agreement with online tax return software providers, requiring them to allow their Free File landing pages to be indexed by search engines and backing out of its pledge not to enter the e-file services marketplace, ProPublica reported on Monday. Why we care Strategic use of robots directives can…
DetailsThis is part of our series on in-house SEO in which we dig into the operational challenges and opportunities that managing search engine optimization in-house presents. A shock to most non-SEO teams at large corporations is that they are the ones impacting SEO every day. They are even more surprised to learn that most SEO…
DetailsFor businesses that operate in the physical world, Google My Business (GMB) has become the center of the digital universe. Google is relying increasingly on content in GMB for ranking and less on third party citations and off-page signals than in the past. A lot happened with GMB this year, far too much to summarize…
DetailsMicrosoft has introduced Bing Rebates, the successor to its now-defunct Cashback shopping program. The new program, which was originally reported by WinBuzzer, makes rebates available to select Microsoft Rewards members when they make purchases through participating retailers on Bing. Why we care In the wake of numerous developments in the e-commerce sector, such as PayPal’s…
DetailsOf the dozens of changes that rolled out across the paid search landscape this year, what had the biggest impact? This was the question I put to the dedicated marketers still monitoring the Twittersphere this holiday week. Two negatives quickly rose to the top. OK, 3 other people working this week….What change had the biggest…
DetailsIn the ebb and flow of content marketing trend analyses comes the return of the “content fatigue” narrative. We’re told content marketing doesn’t work as well as it used to, that it’s redundant and that there’s too much of it. But as long as we have the Internet, content is going to be the playing…
DetailsOur paid search community is dedicated to helping fellow search marketers and as we say goodbye to 2019, we look back at a few insights that were popular with our readers. 1. Where Google RSA inventory comes from may surprise you “Just like broad match will eventually stop showing ads for related queries that fail…
DetailsSearch was a roller coaster of ups and downs in 2019: Structured data-powered rich results helped to push zero-click searches to an all-time high. Regulatory scrutiny heated up as numerous antitrust investigations of Google were announced domestically and abroad. BERT brought enhanced natural language understanding to search engines. Bing turned 10 — it’s been more…
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