Is This A Promise Google Should Be Breaking? Google rethinks banner ads in search results

Brands may soon be getting even more love from Google as the company is reportedly testing big banner-style imagery on ads on brand-specific search results pages.
Do you think these visually-branded ads on search results pages would improve the search experience? 

                           


Search Engine Land has confirmed with Google that the test is legit, but is only a small test in the U.S. There’s no telling if this will amount to an actual feature. Google conducts 20,000 of search experiments every year.
Google reportedly told Synrgy that the experiment was only happening with about 30 advertisers and showing for less than 5% of queries. They also learned that only the banner itself is an add, while all the sitelinks are just part of the organic results.
If it does become a wide-reaching feature, however, it obviously adds a tremendous amount of branding to the search results page. If it does expand to an available ad format, it will be interesting to see if it stays limited to brand-specific queries. As we’ve been seeing, Google has been giving brands some extra visibility even on generic queries.
In some cases, they’re recommending specific brands with the “see results about” feature when the users enters generic queries. Here’s an example showing a search for “travel insurance,” which suggests you search for the top advertiser on the page.
But back to the banner-style ads in question. Google is taking some flack in the press for going back on a promise it made years ago. Google said this in 2005:
There will be no banner ads on the Google homepage or web search results pages. There will not be crazy, flashy, graphical doodads flying and popping up all over the Google site. Ever.
I think this probably qualifies as a graphical doodad on a search results page, so it would seem that “ever” was a bit of a stretch. That said, the above quote was made in context with a partnership between Google and AOL when they announced a global advertising deal. The statement was also made by Marissa Mayer, who is obviously now at Yahoo.
Google had invested $1 billion for a 5% stake in AOL, and expanded a strategic alliance to make more of AOL’s content available to Google users. The companies had first partnered three years before that. Google would continue to provide search technology to AOL, and the AOL Marketplace was created with white labeling of Google’s ad tech, enabling AOL to sell search ads directly to advertisers on AOL-owned properties. It also extended display ads throughout Google’s network and made AOL’s content “more accessible to Google web crawlers.”
You can see the full announcement here.
What Mayer was saying in the post, which was aimed to clear up “misconceptions” about the partnership was that the deal would not result in Google putting banner ads on its search results. And it didn’t.
But things have changed a lot with Google in the past eight years. Google doesn’t even have the same CEO anymore.
Still, she did say “ever.”
But again, it’s just a small test. Who knows if it will even become anything more?
In related news, Google added ad extensions as a ranking factor in Ad Rank, while also giving Ad Rank itself more weight.


About Chris Crum
Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003. 

Resource: http://www.webpronews.com/google-results-for-brands-may-be-getting-a-lot-more-branding-2013-10

Now Google Ad Extensions Will Have A Direct Impact On Rank

You now have another reason to use ad extensions on your AdWords ads. Google revealed that it is now taking them into account in Ad Rank, which determines the ordering of ads on search results pages.
Ad extensions already made ads more useful to consumers by giving them reasons to click or interact (as with call extensions). That’s precisely why Google is using them in ranking. After all, the more useful the better, right?
Historically, Google has only taken max CPC bid and Quality Score into account with Ad Rank. The expected impact of the ad extensions and formats that you use will be used as a third ranking factor. If two competing ads have the same bid and quality score, the extension factor could be the tie breaker.

In case you’re wondering how Google determines “expected impact,” it considers relevance, CTR, and prominence of the extensions or formats on the search results page.
Additionally, Google has increased the importance of Ad Rank itself for determining whether an ad should be displayed with with extensions and formats. Google says you might need to increase your Quality Score, bid or both for extensions and formats to appear.
“In each auction, we’ll generally show your highest performing and most useful combination of extensions and formats among those eligible,” explains Google software engineer Chris Roat. “So there’s no need to try to guess which extensions will help improve your clickthrough rate the most.”
“You may see lower or higher average CPCs in your account,” adds Roat. “You may see lower CPCs if your extensions and formats are highly relevant, and we expect a large positive performance impact relative to other competitors in the auction. In other cases, you may see higher CPCs because of an improvement in ad position or increased competition from other ads with a high expected impact from formats.”
The changes only affect ads that appear on Google search (for now).


About Chris Crum
Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003.

Resource: http://www.webpronews.com/now-google-ad-extensions-will-have-a-direct-impact-on-rank-2013-10

Google Chrome To Support Windows XP Until 2015

Are you still using Windows XP? If so, you should probably upgrade already. Microsoft will be taking if off of life support soon, and Google isn’t giving it much longer.
Google announced today that it intends to support Chrome for Windows XP up through April 2015. That means Google will continue to provide security updates to the Windows XP version of Chrome up through that date. After that, you’re on your own.
Funny enough, Google will continue to support the Windows XP version of Chrome for a year after Microsoft drops support for the operating system. Microsoft said back in April of this year that it would drop extended support for the 12-year-old operating system in April 2014. While having Google support Chrome for one more year is certainly nice, it still won’t protect you from the massive amounts of malware that security researchers expect will hit Windows XP next April.

So, why is Google supporting Chrome even when Windows XP itself will become a hive of malware and exploits? It’s all about taking care of Chrome users, especially those in enterprise, during the transition period to newer versions of Windows:

We recognize that hundreds of millions of users, including a good chunk of current Chrome users, still rely on XP. Moreover, many organizations still run dozens or even hundreds of applications on XP and may have trouble migrating. Our goal is to support Chrome for XP users during this transition process. Most importantly, Chrome on XP will still be automatically updated with the latest security fixes to protect against malware and phishing attacks.

Google is right when it says that organizations will have trouble migrating to Windows 7 and Windows 8. That’s why Microsoft recently announced that it was teaming up with HP to help businesses make the move. The two will not only offer new hardware, but they’ll also offer consultation services and planning staff to help make the move as painless as possible.
Even if it takes a year to finally make the transition to Windows 7 or 8, you can at least rest easy knowing that you have a friend in Google. You’re just not going to find a friend anywhere else until you upgrade.


About Zach Walton
Zach Walton is a Writer for WebProNews. He specializes in gaming and technology. 

Resource: http://www.webpronews.com/google-chrome-to-support-windows-xp-until-2015-2013-10

Google Maps Gets Directions For Multiple Destinations, Reservations, Upcoming Events

Google announced today that it is adding directions for multiple destinations to the new Google Maps preview, which has been available for the past three months. The feature is rolling out today.
Apparently this has been one of the most requested features since Google launched the preview, when the previously available feature went away.

“Whether you’re running weekend errands or planning a cross-country tour, you can plot multiple destinations for your trip with ease – now available for driving, walking and biking directions,” says product manager Florian Goerisch. “Once you’ve chosen a starting point, click ‘+’ and add stops to your route by typing in the search box or clicking on the map.”
Google is also adding the ability to see flight, hotel and restaurant reservations to Google Maps, as well as upcoming events.
“Similar to Google Search, find your flight, hotel, and restaurant reservations faster right in Maps,” says Goerisch. “Just search for your departing airport or dining destination, and we’ll instantly show your upcoming plans. Having all your stuff in one place makes it easier to manage your appointment details and plan your commute. This info is available when you’re signed into Google, and only you can see it.”
This is available on Android and iPhone, and is currently rolling out.
And now when you search for venues in Google Maps, you’ll see lists of upcoming events, like so:
 
This is currently live.
Images: Google

About Chris Crum
Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003

Resource:  http://www.webpronews.com/google-maps-gets-directions-for-multiple-destinations-reservations-upcoming-events-2013-10

Google Penguin Update 2.1 Has Launched

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Google’s Matt Cutts announced late on Friday that Penguin 2.1 was launching, affecting roughly 1% of searches “to a noticeable degree.” This is the first official Penguin announcement we’ve seen since Google revealed its initial Penguin revamp, with 2.0 in May.

Penguin 2.1 launching today. Affects ~1% of searches to a noticeable degree. More info on Penguin: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/04/another-step-to-reward-high-quality.html …

2:20 AM - 5 Oct 2013

Penguin 2.0 was the biggest tweak to Penguin since the update initially launched in April of last year, which was why it was called 2.0 despite the update getting several refreshes in between.
Cutts said this about Penguin 2.0 back when it rolled out: “So this one is a little more comprehensive than Penguin 1.0, and we expect it to go a little bit deeper, and have a little bit more of an impact than the original version of Penguin.”
Penguin 2.0 was said to affect 2.3% of queries with previous data refreshes only impacting 0.1% and 0.3%. The initial Penguin update affected 3.1%. While this latest version (2.1) may not be as big as 2.0 or the original, the 1% of queries affected still represents a significantly larger query set than the other past minor refreshes.
Hat tip to Danny Sullivan for the numbers. The folks over at Search Engine Land, by the way, have been keeping a list of version numbers for these updates, which differs from Google’s actual numbers, so if you’ve been going by those, Danny sorts out the confusion for you.
Penguin, of course, is designed to attack webspam. Here’s what Google said about it in the initial launch:
The change will decrease rankings for sites that we believe are violating Google’s existing quality guidelines. We’ve always targeted webspam in our rankings, and this algorithm represents another improvement in our efforts to reduce webspam and promote high quality content. While we can’t divulge specific signals because we don’t want to give people a way to game our search results and worsen the experience for users, our advice for webmasters is to focus on creating high quality sites that create a good user experience and employ white hat SEO methods instead of engaging in aggressive webspam tactics.
As you can see, Penguin is still part of Google’s Hummingbird algorithm.

About Chris Crum
Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003

Resource:  http://www.webpronews.com/google-penguin-update-2-1-has-launched-2013-10

Sometimes Google’s Knowledge Graph Highlights Brands For Generic Queries

Earlier, we posted an article asking if users can trust the information they see in Google’s Knowledge Graph, discussing errors Google has made. The trustworthiness is important for these results in particular, given that this is the stuff Google is highlighting as “knowledge,” and presumably giving people actual answers to their queries, rather than making them have to dig through third-party results to find them.
A reader named Jason made an interesting comment: “It appears that the knowledge graph is giving large brands an unfair advantage by displaying them for generic terms. One such example is when you do a search for a generic term such as travel insurance. It currently brings up a bio for an individual company, Travel Guard.”
Sure enough, I performed that query, and got the same result, and as you can see, Travel Guard is also the top advertiser on this page. It’s also the top organic result.

The traditional ads are all marked as such, but this shows no indication that it is a sponsored result. Google’s Knowledge Graph just thinks that if you are searching for “travel insurance” there’s a very good chance you were talking about Travel Guard. You probably didn’t care about any other provider (though if you do, you can find them further down in the organic results.
Regardless of whether or not this has anything to do with the fact that the brand is an advertiser, there is a perfectly good Wikipedia entry for the term “travel insurance, which provides a non-biased, non-branded result. Considering that Google often draws from WIkipedia for Knowledge Graph results, it’s a little odd that that it wouldn’t go that route on a query like this.
I tried out some other generic keywords. I found a similar result for “online betting”. This time there aren’t any sponsored results, but there is a “see results about” box for BetOnline, a privately held company.
Why single this company out for one of these boxes? It’s not even the top organic result in this case. And wouldn’t it make more sense to show the “online gambling” Wikipedia entry that it is listed under BetOnline in the organic results (especially considering that much of the Knowledge Graph info draws from Wikipedia, and when you actually click over to the BetOnline results, you’re presented with a “knowledge panel” for BetOnline, pointing to its Wikipedia page)?
The ‘buy” results are quite interesting, as there are Knowledge Graph entries for Best Buy and Rakuten.com Shopping. These are the first two organic results as well, followed by Apple’s iPhone page, curiously, then the dictionary definition of the word buy. And look who the sponsored result is (hint: it’s Rakuten.com)
I couldn’t get a Best Buy ad to show for the query, but they are an advertiser, as you can see on the “buy electronics” query:
If you want to “buy” something, you must be looking for one of these two retailers, right? Certainly not Amazon or even Google Shopping.
Also interesting on the “buy” example is the “in-depth articles” section, which points to an article from Bloomberg Businessweek from 2006 about Best Buy’s Senior Director of Multichannel Order Management, one from Wired about Best Buy, and one from The Verge about “every thing you need to know” about buying a camera.
“These results are ranked algorithmically based on many signals that look for high-quality, in-depth content,” said Google when it launched the in-depth articles. We don’t know much more about how these are picked.
Also worth noting is that whatever algorithm Google uses to show related searches doesn’t appear to deem Best Buy or Rakuten.com related enough to include in the list.
To be fair, I don’t know who’s just searching for “buy” on Google and expecting to find anything helpful, but it’s interesting to see what Google thinks people want.
A search for “cheap flights” brings up a “see results about” box for CheapFlights, a company that operates a family of travel sites. This one makes a little more sense since its name is the same as the query. It shows that it was smart to name itself after such a sought after generic query. It also shows up as the top organic result, just below Google’s own Flight Search box. I guess there is still some power to those exact match domains.
Despite the similarity between the company’s name and the query, (the company doesn’t have a space, and the query did), is it fair to give this brand an extra boost over its competitors, given that it’s such a generic term? Google could just not have one of these boxes at all. It’s not like they have them on every query, and it’s not like searchers won’t be able to find CheapFlights.com when it’s the top organic result anyway.
When you click to see results about CheapFlights, the company, you get a Knowledge Panel, once again pointing to its Wikipedia entry, which Wikipedia itself says is written like an advertisement.
I didn’t immediately come across any other glaring examples of branded results like these, though I would guess there are plenty of others, given how little time it took to find these, but I do have a few other observations I feel like pointing out.
When you search for the generic keyword “rent,” for example, the organic results are all over the place. They include things like the Wikipedia entry for the musical, rent.com (for apartments), the IMDb page for the movie version of Rent, some local real estate rental results, and the dictionary definition of rent.
Clearly, Google has no idea what the user is talking about, which is typically where the Knowledge Graph shines. It helps you let Google know which thing you are actually looking for via these “see results about” boxes. In this case, however, the Knowledge Graph only assumes I’m either talking about the musical (which it lists as a book for some reason, while pointing to a page about the actual musical) or the film. No mention of actual rentals, like some of the results you find in the organic results.
Why not distinguish between different meanings for “rent” with Knowledge Graph so people can get the right results? Same goes for the the query “AFL”. This shows no Knowledge Graph results whatsoever, but it has organic results for a variety of different options, such as AFLAC stock, the Australian Football League, Arena Football League, American Federation of Labor, AFLGlobal, etc. Wouldn’t the Knowledge Graph differentiation make a lot of sense on a query like this?
Granted, Google is continuing to expand Knowledge Graph results, so there is no reason to think it won’t have them on a query like this in the future. Still, Google does provide Knowledge Graph results distinguishing between different meanings of NRL:
We’ve reached out to Google for comment/clarification about why brands sometimes appear in Knowledge Graph boxes for generic terms, and will update accordingly.

About Chris Crum
Chris Crum has been a part of the WebProNews team and the iEntry Network of B2B Publications since 2003. 

Resource:  http://www.webpronews.com/sometimes-googles-knowledge-graph-highlights-brands-for-generic-queries-2013-10