Google has rolled out a new shopping ad in AdWords just in time for the holiday season.
Showcase Shopping ads have been designed to meet the needs of today’s mobile shoppers, while giving businesses the opportunity to sell more products.
This new ad type allows advertisers to put together a selection of products to be showcased in the same ad.
Over 40% of shopping searches are for broad-match terms, according to Google’s research. Showcase Shopping ads let advertisers display a collection of “living room furniture,” for example, and help consumers decide what to buy.
Google ran a test of Showcase Shopping ads last year. It was found that shoppers who engage with the new ad typeare more likely to consider the brand being advertised.
Results from Google’s test last year also show that shoppers may begin to search for a brand by name after engaging with its Showcase Shopping ads.
Showcase Shopping ads recently led to 3x increase in brand searches for Overstock.com, and 32% more clicks resulting in a purchase.
In addition to AdWords, Showcase Shopping ads are supported by DoubleClick Search, Kenshoo, and Marin.
LinkedIn is bringing smart replies to its messaging platform in an effort to help keep conversations going.
Finding the time to reply to messages on LinkedIn can be a challenge, the company admits, but failure to respond could result in missed opportunities.
LinkedIn promises to shave time off the process of sending messages back and forth with its new smart replies.
Smart replies are suggested responses you can send with a quick tap. However, they’re not your average cookie-cutter replies.
Machine learning is used to suggest responses that are contextual and relevant to the current conversation. LinkedIn will suggest at least three replies for every message received.
LinkedIn intends to build on this feature in the future with even more intelligent replies, such as replies that may include the name of the person you’re messaging.
Smart replies are rolling out worldwide to English users on the LinkedIn mobile app and desktop web client.
If you’d rather not use smart replies you’re free to turn the feature off in the settings menu.
At last week’s SMX East conference, Google’s webmaster trends analyst Gary Illyes took questions from the dual moderators — Barry Schwartz and Michelle Robbins — as well as from the audience in a session called “Ask Me Anything.”
In this post, I will cover that question-and-answer dialogue, though what you’ll see below are paraphrases rather than exact quotes. I have grouped the questions and used section headers to help improve the flow and readability.
Off-site signals
Barry: You’ve been saying recently that Google looks at other offsite signals, in addition to links, and some of this sounded like Google is doing some form of sentiment analysis.
Gary: I did not say that Google did sentiment analysis, but others assumed that was what I meant. What I was attempting to explain is that how people perceive your site will affect your business, but will not necessarily affect how Google ranks your site. Mentions on third-party sites, however, might help you, because Google looks to them to get a better idea what your site is about and get keyword context. And that, in turn, might help you rank for more keywords.
Imagine the Google ranking algo is more like a human. If a human sees a lot of brand mentions, they will remember that, and the context in which they saw them. As a result, they may associate that brand with something that they didn’t before. That can happen with the Google algorithm as well.
Mobile First, AMP, PWAs and such
Michelle: Where should SEOs focus their efforts in 2018?
Gary: If you are not mobile-friendly, then address that. That said, I believe the fear of the mobile-first index will be much greater than the actual impact in the end.
Michelle: When will mobile-first roll out?
Gary: Google doesn’t have a fixed timeline, but I can say that we have moved some sites over to it already. We are still monitoring those sites to make sure that we are not harming them inadvertently. Our team is working really hard to move over sites that are ready to the mobile-first index, but I don’t want to give a timeline because I’m not good at it. It will probably take years, and even then, will probably not be 100 percent converted.
The mobile-first index as a phrase is a new thing, but we have been telling developers to go mobile for seven years. If you have a responsive site, you are pretty much set. But if you have a mobile site, you need to check for content parity and structured data parity between your desktop and mobile pages. You should also check for hreflang tags, and that you’ve also moved all media and images over.
Michelle: Where does AMP fit? Is AMP separate from mobile-first? Is the only AMP benefit the increased site speed?
Gary: Yes, this is correct. AMP is an alternate version of the site. If you have a desktop site, and no mobile site, but do have an AMP site, we will still index the desktop site.
Michelle: If half a site is a progressive web app (PWA), and half is responsive, how does that impact search performance?
Gary: PWAs are JavaScript apps. If they can render, they will do pretty much the same as the responsive site. However, we are currently using Chrome Version 41 for rendering, and that’s not the latest, so there are newer APIs not supported by V41. If you’re are using those APIs, you may have a problem. Google is working to get to the latest version of Chrome for rendering, which will solve that issue.
Barry: I’ve seen desktop search showing one result and a mobile device showing a different page as an AMP result.
Gary: This happens because of our emphasis on indexing mobile-friendly sites. AMP is an alternate version of the regular mobile page. First, the mobile page gets selected to be ranked. Then the AMP page gets swapped in.
Michelle: So that means AMP is inconsequential in ranking?
Gary: Yes.
Michelle: Will there be a penalty for spamming news carousels?
Gary: We get that question a lot. I do not support most penalties. I (and many others at Google) would like to have algorithms that ignore those things [like spam] and eliminate the benefit. I’ve spoken with the Top Stories team about this, and they are looking into a solution.
Michelle: What about progressive web apps (PWAs)? Do they get the same treatment as AMP, i.e., no ranking boost?
Gary: If you have a standalone app, it will show up in the mobile-first index. But if you have both a PWA and an AMP page, the AMP page will be shown.
Michelle: What if the elements removed from your mobile-first site are ads? [Would that make the AMP version rank higher?]
Gary: Your site will become faster [by adopting AMP and eliminating these ads]. The “above the fold” algorithm looks at how many ads there are, and if it sees too many, it may not let your site rank as highly as it otherwise might. But when we’re looking at whether sites are ready for the mobile-first index, we’re more concerned about parity regarding content, annotations and structured data than ads.
Michelle: What about author markup?
Gary: Because AMP pages on a media site can show up in the news carousel, the AMP team said that you shouldn’t remove the author info when you’re creating AMP pages.
Search Console
Barry: When will SEOs be able to see voice search query information in Search Console?
Gary: I have no update on that. I’m waiting for the search team leads to take action on it.
Barry: How is the Search Console beta going?
Gary: It’s going well. There are a significant number of sites in the beta. We’re getting good feedback and making changes. We want to launch something that works really well. I’m not going to predict when it will come out of beta.
Barry: When will they get a year’s worth of data?
Gary: They have started collecting the data. Not sure if it will launch. The original plan was to launch with the new UI. [Gary doesn’t know if plans have changed, or when the new UI will launch.]
Barry: Why is there no Featured Snippet data in Search Console? You built it, tested it, and then didn’t launch it.
Gary: There is internal resistance at Google. The internal team leads want to know how it would be useful to publishers. How would publishers use it?
Barry: It would give us info on voice search.
Gary: I need something to work with to argue for it (to persuade the team leads internally at Google that it would be a good thing to release).
This question about how the featured snippet data would be used was then sent to the audience.
Eric Enge (your author) spoke from the audience: I’d like to use the data to show clients just how real the move to voice search is. There are things they need to do to get ready, such as understand how interactions with their customers will change.
Michelle: So, that data could be used to drive adoption. For now, that sounds like more of a strategic insight than immediately actionable information.
Gary: The problem is that voice search has been here for a couple of years. Voice search is currently optimized for what we have, and people shouldn’t need to change anything about their sites. Maybe there will be new technologies in the future that will help users.
Michelle: I think that it’s more complicated than that. There are things that you can do with your content that will help it surface better in search, and brands can invest resources in structuring content that can handle conversations better.
Ads on Google and the user experience
Michelle: As you (Google) push organic results below the fold [to give more prominence to ads and carousels] … is that a good user experience?
Gary: I click on a lot of search ads. (Note that Googler clicks that occur on our internal network don’t count as clicks for advertisers, so this costs you nothing.)
I believe that ads in search are more relevant than the 10 blue links. On every search page, there’s pretty aggressive bidding going on for every single position. Since bids correlate to relevance and the quality of the site, this does tend to result in relevant results
Barry: Sometimes the ads are more relevant than the organic results …?
Gary: Especially on international searches.
Michelle: How is that determined?
Gary: This is done algorithmically.
Michelle: How can you compare ads to organic if the two aren’t working together?
Gary: The concept of a bidding process and the evaluation of quality are used by both sides. The separation between the groups is more about keeping the ads people who talk to clients away from the organic people, so they don’t try to influence them. The ads engineering people, they can talk to the organic side; that’s not forbidden.
Ranking factors and featured snippets
Michelle: Does Google factor non-search traffic into rankings?
Gary: First of all, search traffic is not something we use in rankings. As for other kinds of traffic, Google might see that through Analytics, but I swear we do not use Analytics data for search rankings. We also have data from Chrome, but Chrome is insanely noisy.
I actually evaluated the potential for using that data but couldn’t determine how it could be effectively used in ranking.
Barry: What about indirect signals from search traffic, such as pogosticking? Previously, Google has said that they do not use that directly for ranking.
Gary: Yes, we use it only for QA of our ranking algorithms.
Barry: At one point, Jeff Dean said that Google does use them.
Gary: I do not know what he was talking about. The RankBrain team is using a lot of different data sources. There was a long internal email thread on this topic, but I was never able to get the bottom of it.
Michelle: Is RankBrain used to validate featured snippets?
Gary: RankBrain is a generic ranking algorithm which focuses on the 10 blue links. It tries to predict what results will work better based on historical query results. The featured snippets team uses their own result algorithm to generate a good result. I have not looked into what that means on their side. RankBrain is not involved, except that it will evaluate the related blue link.
Barry: Featured snippets themselves are fascinating. You said that they are changing constantly. Please explain.
Gary: The context for that discussion was about future developments for featured snippets. The team is working around the clock to improve their relevancy. The codebase underlying it is constantly changing.
Michelle: Does the device being used by the searcher factor in?
Gary: I don’t think so.
Schema and markup
Gary: I want to live in a world where schema is not that important, but currently, we need it. If a team at Google recommends it, you probably should make use of it, as schema helps us understand the content on the page, and it is used in certain search features (but not in rankings algorithms).
Michelle: Why do you want to be less reliant on it?
Gary: I’m with Sergey and Larry on this. Google should have algorithms that can figure out things without needing schema, and there really should not be a need for penalties.
Michelle: Schema is being used as training data?
Gary: No, it’s being used for rich snippets.
Michelle: Eventually the algo will not need the schema?
Gary: I hope so. The algorithms should not need the extra data.
Barry: Is there a team actively working on that?
Gary: Indirectly, absolutely. It probably involves some sort of machine learning, and if so, it’s the Brain team that works on it. I do not know if they have an active project for that.
Barry: How did you get entity data in the past?
Gary: From Freebase and the Knowledge Graph.
Panda and thin content
Barry: You said that pruning content was a bad idea. If you’re hit by Panda, how do people proceed?
Gary: Panda is part of our core ranking algorithm. I don’t think that anyone in a responsible position at Google thinks of Panda as a penalty. It’s very similar to other parts of the algorithm. It’s a ranking algorithm. If you do something to attempt to rank higher than you should, it basically tries to remove the advantage you got, but not punish you.
Ultimately, you want to have a great site that people love. That is what Google is looking for, and our users look for that, as well. If users leave comments or mention your site on their site and things like that, that will help your ranking.
Pruning does not help with Panda. It’s very likely that you did not get Pandalyzed because of your low-quality content. It’s more about ensuring the content that is actually ranking doesn’t rank higher than it should.
Barry: Pruning bad content is advice that SEOs have been giving for a long time to try and help people deal with Panda.
Gary: I do not think that would ever have worked. It definitely does not work with the current version of the core algorithm, and it may just bring your traffic farther down. Panda basically disregards things you do to rank artificially. You should spend resources on improving content instead, but if you don’t have the means to do that, maybe remove it instead.
Using disavow
Michelle: Should you use disavow on the bad links to your site?
Gary: I have a site that gets 100,000 visits every two weeks. I haven’t looked at the links to it for two years, even though I’ve been told that it has some porn site links. I’m fine with that. I don’t use the disavow file. Don’t overuse it. It is a big gun.
Overusing it can destroy your rankings in a matter of hours. Don’t be afraid of sites that you don’t know. There’s no way you can know them all. If they have content, and they are not spammy, why would you disavow them?
Sites like this are very unlikely to hurt you, and they may help you. I personally trust the Google filters.
Barry: Penguin just ignores the links.
Gary: Penguin does that, too (Gary’s phrase implies that there other algorithms that might filter bad links out, as well).
Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
Snapchat recently updated its iOS app with a feature that was previously only available on Android — link sharing from third-party apps.
When you’re viewing content in another app and tap the share button at the bottom of the screen, you will now see Snapchat as an option of other apps to share to.
A link to the content can then be sent as a private message in Snapchat to one or as many people as you like.
This opens up another source of social media referral traffic for publishers, which is becoming ever more elusive with major social networks tweaking their algorithms to favor paid content.
Along with this update, the latest version of Snapchat has another new feature that is worth mentioning.
Ghost Mode
Want to go off the grid and share Snaps without alerting others of your location? Turn on Ghost Mode.
Enabling Ghost Mode from the settings menu allows users to stop sharing their location for a duration of 3 hours, 24 hours, or indefinitely until turned off.
This will be useful for people who want to share pictures and videos without broadcasting their exact location at the time.
Both of these updates are available now in the latest version of Snapchat for iOS.
Here’s our recap of what happened in online marketing today, as reported on Marketing Land and other places across the web.
From Marketing Land:
The ROI of recommendation engines for marketing
Oct 31, 2017 by Daniel Faggella
Recommendation engines are a powerful tool for Amazon, Netflix and more. Columnist Daniel Faggella takes a look at the benefits of recommendation engines and explains why marketers should be paying attention.
Connect with your audience across multiple channels and at scale
Oct 31, 2017 by Digital Marketing Depot
Consumers are bombarded by hundreds of competing messages every day, many of which lack any specific relevance to them. As they become more and more fatigued from this excess noise, consumers are becoming more adept and emboldened to tune out all of a brand’s marketing efforts if they miss the mark.
Ad-mageddon! Ad blocking, its impact, and what comes next
Oct 31, 2017 by Anthony Muller
Contributor Anthony Muller talks with the IAB, publishers, agencies and Adblock Plus to get their perspectives on the rise of ad blocking, its effects on the digital ad ecosystem, and what we can expect to see in the future.
Recent Headlines From MarTech Today, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Marketing Technology:
3 ABM themes to expect at Dreamforce 2017
Oct 31, 2017 by Peter Isaacson
More people are paying attention to Account-Based Marketing, and the conference attendees at Dreamforce are no exception. Columnist Peter Isaacson discusses three ABM themes that will dominate the event.
Amy Gesenhues is Third Door Media’s General Assignment Reporter, covering the latest news and updates for Marketing Land and Search Engine Land. From 2009 to 2012, she was an award-winning syndicated columnist for a number of daily newspapers from New York to Texas. With more than ten years of marketing management experience, she has contributed to a variety of traditional and online publications, including MarketingProfs.com, SoftwareCEO.com, and Sales and Marketing Management Magazine. Read more of Amy’s articles.
Join our social media and CX experts as they explain how social customer service tools can help brands provide winning digital customer experiences. They’ll discuss how to manage that experience across multiple social touch points, leverage evolving social customer service tools and platforms to deliver long-term value and act on real-time customer insights to drive […]
In response to Google’s recent announcement that AdWords campaigns can now spend up to twice an advertiser’s average daily budget, columnist Daniel Gilbert shares a script to keep your budget under control.
Columnist Adam Dorfman discusses the current local search ecosystem and emphasizes the need to regularly optimize your data and content so that your business can be found where people are searching.
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:
2017 Halloween Logos From The Search Industry
Yesterday we shared a preview of the Google Halloween logo which is both an animated Doodle and a video Doodle at the same time. But now that it is Halloween, I wanted to share the logos from the search industry, not just Google, but also Bing, Dogpile, Baidu, Sogou…
Google Employee Clicks On AdWords Ads Do Not Cost
Did you know that if a Google employee, Googler, clicks on your AdWords or any Google ads, while in the Google network, Google doesn’t count those clicks…
Google: Your Multilingual Pages Shouldn’t Be Word For Word Translation
Some folks might think that Google requires that when you use hreflang and make a multilingual web site, that each page that is translated from one language to another must be done word-for-word. That is absolutely not the case…
Google Branded Force Water Bottles
I suspect Force is a popular and trendy brand for water bottles, which is why I see a picture of them with the Google logo on them. I guess Google ordered branded Google water bottles from a company n
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
Go to Source
Author: barry@rustybrick.com (Barry Schwartz)
Google’s John Mueller has cleared up any confusion around what to do with low quality content when he was asked about it today during a Google Webmaster Hangout.
First, Mueller gives a decidedly non-technical definition of low quality content:
“So, in general, when it comes to low quality content that’s something where we see your website is providing something but it’s not really that fantastic.”
What should you do if you happen to come across low quality content on your site? There are two approaches, Mueller says, so don’t jump to the conclusion that the content should be deleted.
The best solution is to keep the content where it is and improve upon it.
“There are two approaches to tackling this. On one hand you can improve your content, and from my point of view if you can improve your content that’s probably the best approach possible.”
Really take a look at the content and think about why you published it in the first place. If it has a purpose then make sure it adds value.
“You clearly had a reason for putting this out, now be serious about the content you put out and make sure it’s useful.”
Mueller adds that there may be extenuating circumstances where deleting the content is a better option.
Sometimes you may not be able to improve on low quality content because there’s just so much, or maybe it was all auto-generated at one point.
Rather than improving some pieces of content and not improving others, Mueller recommends being consistent and cleaning it all up.
Noindexing low quality content is an acceptable way of “cleaning it up,” Mueller says.
So there you have it. If there’s low quality content on your site that can be improved upon — do it. If you can’t, get rid of it.
E-commerce advertisers, on average, spent 20 percent more money on Facebook ads in the third quarter of 2017 than they did in the same period last year, according to a report published on Tuesday by Nanigans, a company that provides software for brands to automate their Facebook ad buys and that is a part of Facebook’s Marketing Developers program. A Nanigans spokesperson declined to say how many advertisers were included in the study.
While e-commerce brands are pushing more money into the social network in general, they are particularly purchasing more mobile video ads and retargeted ads from Facebook. These marketers spent, on average, 40 percent more money on Facebook’s mobile video ads in Q3 2017 than in Q3 2016. And the share of their ad spend that went to Facebook’s Dynamic Ads — its product catalog-promoting ad format that retargets the people who browsed a brand’s site or app — increased by 284 percent year over year.
While the share of e-commerce brands’ budgets going to Dynamic Ads grew, it’s unclear how big (or small) a piece of those budgets the ad format accounts for. The Nanigans spokesperson declined to say what was the actual share of e-commerce brands’ budgets spent on Dynamic Ads.
Interestingly, e-commerce advertisers increased their spending on Facebook despite an increase in the social network’s ad rates and a decrease in its ads’ performance for these brands.
E-commerce advertisers typically paid $8.40 for every thousand times their ads were served across Facebook and its Audience Network ad network of third-party sites and apps (Nanigans’ study did not include Instagram campaigns). That’s a 69 percent higher CPM than e-commerce brands paid a year ago and corresponds with a 57 percent year-over-year increase among all advertisers to $9.31.
While e-commerce brands paid a premium for impressions, clicks were significantly cheaper at $0.46 on average. That CPC has similarly swelled over the past year, but e-commerce brands also pay less money per click than the average Facebook advertiser that paid $0.55 per click in Q3 2017, a 54 percent increase year over year.
At the same time Facebook’s ad rates have risen, its ads’ performance has dipped. In Q3 2017, people clicked on e-commerce brands’ Facebook ads about 1.84 percent of the time, down 4 percent compared to a year ago. However, that’s still a better click-through rate than the average advertiser saw on Facebook. In Q3, Facebook’s worldwide click-through rate averaged 1.69 percent, up 2 percent compared to a year ago but down 4 percent compared to the previous quarter. That marked the first time Facebook’s average global click-through rate declined from Q2 to Q3, according to Nanigans, though the company’s spokesperson said that shift “is unlikely to be indicative of a larger directional change in the market.”
About The Author
Tim Peterson, Third Door Media’s Social Media Reporter, has been covering the digital marketing industry since 2011. He has reported for Advertising Age, Adweek and Direct Marketing News. A born-and-raised Angeleno who graduated from New York University, he currently lives in Los Angeles. He has broken stories on Snapchat’s ad plans, Hulu founding CEO Jason Kilar’s attempt to take on YouTube and the assemblage of Amazon’s ad-tech stack; analyzed YouTube’s programming strategy, Facebook’s ad-tech ambitions and ad blocking’s rise; and documented digital video’s biggest annual event VidCon, BuzzFeed’s branded video production process and Snapchat Discover’s ad load six months after launch. He has also developed tools to monitor brands’ early adoption of live-streaming apps, compare Yahoo’s and Google’s search designs and examine the NFL’s YouTube and Facebook video strategies.
Join our social media and CX experts as they explain how social customer service tools can help brands provide winning digital customer experiences. They’ll discuss how to manage that experience across multiple social touch points, leverage evolving social customer service tools and platforms to deliver long-term value and act on real-time customer insights to drive social ROI.
Attend this webinar and learn:
social strategies that drive loyalty and advocacy throughout the customer journey.
social customer service response techniques that meet — and exceed — customer expectations.
how global brands use social networks and communities to grow their customer bases.
Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
About The Author
Digital Marketing Depot is a resource center for digital marketing strategies and tactics. We feature hosted white papers and E-Books, original research, and webcasts on digital marketing topics — from advertising to analytics, SEO and PPC campaign management tools to social media management software, e-commerce to e-mail marketing, and much more about internet marketing. Digital Marketing Depot is a division of Third Door Media, publisher of Search Engine Land and Marketing Land, and producer of the conference series Search Marketing Expo and MarTech. Visit us at http://digitalmarketingdepot.com.
The Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH) market is heating up. And, to keep up, DOOH ad platform Vistar Media has launched a private marketplace.
Called Marketplace Deals, it covers outdoor US and Canadian digital signage like billboards, bus shelter displays and screens in elevators and taxis.
In a private marketplace, ad buyers and inventory sellers know from whom they are buying or selling, as opposed to open digital ad exchanges where the identities of advertisers and inventory owners are less visible.
CEO Michael Provenano told me that Marketplace Deals is distinguished from other DOOH private marketplaces by two differentiators.
Barry Levine covers marketing technology for Third Door Media. Previously, he covered this space as a Senior Writer for VentureBeat, and he has written about these and other tech subjects for such publications as CMSWire and NewsFactor. He founded and led the web site/unit at PBS station Thirteen/WNET; worked as an online Senior Producer/writer for Viacom; created a successful interactive game, PLAY IT BY EAR: The First CD Game; founded and led an independent film showcase, CENTER SCREEN, based at Harvard and M.I.T.; and served over five years as a consultant to the M.I.T. Media Lab. You can find him at LinkedIn, and on Twitter at xBarryLevine.
Since the mid ’90s, the internet has been filled with examples of something tiny becoming something big — and changing everything. Ad blocking is another of those stories that will be told, in years to come, around smoldering tweet-fires by grumpy old digital marketers like me.
Ad blockers have already had a huge impact on the digital landscape. This impact could only grow larger if the popularity of blocking ads reaches a critical mass on mobile as well as desktop. For this article, I talked with numerous publishers, users, the Interactive Advertising Bureau, media agencies and Adblock Plus itself to get a complete view of the varying perspectives on ad blocking, and most importantly, to try to tackle where it will all wind up.
Ad-blocking background
Skip ahead to the next heading if you already know the ad-blocking basics. If not, ad blockers are desktop/mobile browser add-ons or standalone browsers that cause most paid advertising to completely vanish from your surfing experience.
Tired of ads intermingling with your search results? Install an ad blocker and enjoy ZERO sponsored ads. Weary of watching a 30-second Facebook video with a 15-second mid-stack ad shoved dead in the center? Simple fix: Download an ad blocker, and voila, video only — c’est la vie, Zuckerberg.
The same applies to most every site, from YouTube video ads to click-bait style (“see what happens next”) modules at the bottom or right rail of most popular content.
There are other reasons to download ad blockers as well — security reasons, like: stop the bad people from accessing my webcam. Did you know that even innocuous sites can open your mic or access your cam? Did you ever get a bizarre feeling that somehow all sorts of different places know you were looking at that “Nicolas Cage rainbow pillowcase?” HOW?
Well, a little plug-and-play add-on or mobile browser can help stop all of that dead in its tracks.
There are many instances (some intentional and some not so intentional) of ads creating malware issues. “Malvertising” has been found not just on seedy sites you would expect to have privacy or security issues with. Even The New York Times and the BBC last year had an issue when they inadvertently ran ads that attempted to hijack the computers of visitors.
Many well-recognized sites have had similar issues to varying degrees. Using ad blockers eliminates most of these issues from ever being a concern.
The user perspective
While there are many different reasons given for using an ad blocker, the bottom-line motivation is pretty simple. Either users are sick of being bombarded by ads and experiencing their effects on the user experience, or they have security or privacy concerns.
If I were writing a confession, I would tell a tale about how I nearly lost my sanity as my mobile phone choked on a 20-slide, “click-bait”-style gallery. It was ever resizing, lagging, and ads kept “enlarging” where the “next” button was located, causing me to click an ad instead of the next button. Yes, this was even on WiFi.
That was when I began using ad blockers on my desktop and phone. Maybe it was one of the first cases of PTAD (Post Traumatic Ad Disorder) ever recorded. I’m getting long in the tooth and don’t appreciate having my precious remaining moments sucked up by ads.
The publishers’ perspective
I’ve worked with some of the biggest names in media over the last 18 years and might be a little more empathetic to their plight than a typical consumer. Publishers seem to be getting it from all sides. The way people consume news has vastly changed and impacted many publications.
Then, you have instances of Google depriving the publications of more and more clicks over time from direct results (“answers”) to the “view original image” additions into Chrome. Now, many sites who actually do get a visit from a human fail to monetize the pageview because that person has ad blocking enabled.
I’ve reached out to numerous publications about the issue, and many of them either declined to comment or stopped responding when they heard about the topic of the article. Like saying “Candyman” three times in a mirror, it’s almost as if they don’t want to even utter the name, for fear it will have bad consequences.
Some publishers, such as Forbes and Business Insider, have taken fairly aggressive action by blocking those with ad blockers. Others, such as The Guardian, take a more subtle approach and attempt to appeal to a reader’s logic.
To be fair, many may have gone a bit too far with jamming ads into content or trying to inflate page views artificiallyusing tactics like multi-page slideshows. Unfortunately, whether or not they were part of the inception or rise in popularity of ad blockers, all publishers are now dealing with the effects.
Something I’ve seen lately are publications that attempt to trick ad blockers using various techniques. One maddening method I ran into involved about 20 to 30 separate scripts running that would auto-load and insert ads if one happened to get blocked. This was set up on a news site. When I attempted to block the actual ad object, another script and ad would be loaded in its place. I’ve dubbed this the “whack-a-mole” strategy. To me, it appeared to be an indicator of desperation.
Another interesting method publishers have been using is to use their own server as an ad server. This tricks the blockers into thinking the ad is not really an ad. While this method may trick casual users, advanced users can easily block those ad sections with a right click setting in their ad blocker.
Publications such as Wired and City A.M. at one time reportedly blocked ad-blocking readers, but have since stopped doing so. Other publications like Forbes and Business Insider have stayed the course, apparently still blocking all users with blockers, asking them to whitelist them or disable the blocker. While I understand the thinking, this approach seems to anger quite a few users, and there are many message boards and social chatter with derogatory posts raging about this practice.
As an aside, I think companies that employ this technique should be advised that using Google’s “cached” version of the page gets around the ad-block wall. Tighten that loophole up, and cast a scowl at your consultants.
I do occasionally see other approaches, like an “article limit,” which allows you to read a couple of articles free a month or other set period of time.
I contacted Alon Zieve, COO of Seeking Alpha, who appears to be navigating the ad-blocking issue in a logical way. Zieve reports that blockers have definitely had an impact on SA revenue. They’ve taken efforts to block certain ad-block users and offer them an option to whitelist or subscribe to the ad-free version. “Fortunately, because our users love our content, we have a relatively good take-up rate on these options.”
Interestingly, he finds that users actually have a hard time trying to figure out how to whitelist the site when they decide to do so. Seeking Alpha also has their own version of Google’s Contributor Service, a great email strategy, and other marketing strategies in place.
When asked about what publishers need to do to survive, Zieve responded, “At Seeking Alpha, our approach to survival is simple. Produce great, valuable content that our users love, and there will always be a way to monetize it.” Their multi-pronged approach appears to have been successful for them in mitigating the ad-block issue.
Adblock Plus’s perspective
I conducted a Skype interview with Ben Williams, director of communications at Adblock Plus. He had some interesting things to say about the history of Adblock Plus, the challenges, and where he thinks it will be going.
I happen to agree with Williams’s view that Adblock Plus was just answering the call for what was desperately wanted out there. The big bad wolves tried first to sue small companies into submission (some are still at it) and then, when that failed, some decided they would work with them.
Adblock Plus doesn’t appear to have any axes to grind. Williams was surprisingly zen about the lawsuits and negative press. In fact, the media outcry was met with Adblock Plus lightening up a bit and not blocking all ads, but setting the sensitivity setting (if you will) a little lower.
It’s also important to note that Adblock Plus can be paid to default whitelist your ads as long as they adhere to their quality guidelines, and many large players have done so.
Adblock Plus supports the new models of how publishers will get funded, and they don’t think the ad-blocking genie will ever get put back into the bottle. When asked for his thoughts on the “tug-of-war” that has happened in the past with publishers trying to get around ad blockers, Williams replied, “It doesn’t really serve the consumer very well.”
He added that instead of “jumping into a tech arms race, (publishers) should consider the fact that so many people are blocking ads and should make better ads.” He believes, for the most part, that’s what has been happening. There are some publishers out there that believe fighting the tide of ad blockers is their best option, but Williams thinks that might be a pretty bad way to treat their users.
When asked about the problem with apps and how they prevent ad blocking, he stated that there really isn’t anything that can be done about that yet. Adblock Plus used to have an app that allowed users to block those ads, but it was kicked out of the Play Store in 2011.
Williams does believe that many people are still using browsers to access sites and that the future of ad blocking on mobile is with the blocking browsers. When Twitter announced it will be using Safari for anyone following a link from iOS versions of its app, it was a huge lift to any one of Twitter’s 328 million users that may have ad blockers installed.
I asked Williams what he thought about Google announcing its own “ad-blocking” features on Chrome and what that would look like. He replied, “What Google has announced so far sounds more to me to be a pop-up blocker.” He believes the ad-blocking community is going to still want to block things like YouTube video ads.
Williams guesses but doesn’t know if those features will be included in the Chrome update. “It all depends on the implementation,” he said. My personal guess is that YouTube video ads won’t be defaulting to the off position — does anyone think they would?
Williams’s view on the future of ad blocking is that it isn’t going anywhere anytime time soon. He believes that recent moves from Apple and Twitter using Safari will only make blocking ads easier. Interestingly, when wondering where things will go on mobile devices, Williams tells us to “look to the East,” saying that people in China, Indonesia and India are blocking ads on their mobile devices at higher rates than we’ve ever seen on desktop.
A survey Adblock Plus recently conducted discovered why US users aren’t using mobile ad blockers the way they are in the East. Williams said the overwhelming response was that they “just didn’t know it exists.” If that survey is correct, I think a safe bet is that we’ll see a surge of mobile ad blocking in the US sometime in the near future.
Looking down the road, Williams feels the best way for publishers to approach their ad-blocking audience is to “reach them with a specialized experience that can also be profitable.” He feels that a “frictionless payment system” for publishers might work out well for those who understand they need to support content that they consume.
Media and agency perspectives
It’s no secret just how much companies like Google, Facebook and other big media players depend on ad revenues. In 2015, advertising generated close to to 90 percent of Google’s total revenue. Facebook makes 84 percent of its ad revenue from mobile. When you’re talking billions, even a small dent can make giants sit up and take notice.
One doesn’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to see a definitive pattern in all the recent moves from the big players. We’ve seen the IAB putting out its acronym-rich strategy in an attempt to slow an outbreak of mobile ad blocking by decreasing the demand for it. Google has been pushing the “contributor” service along with other moves that seem to telegraph a reaction to ad blocking such as:
I corresponded with Dennis Buchheim, SVP and general manager of the IAB Tech Lab, about the Coalition for Better Ads (CBA). Buchheim reports that their global effort is focused on providing education and guidance on the user experience, along with guidelines for “better ads” — the goal of which is to slow the motivation to block ads.
Buchheim believes the “installation of ad-blocking technology is often motivated by consumers dealing with ad experiences from other parties who aren’t interested in adopting these guidelines.”
But what is a publisher to do? “IAB created the IAB Ad Blocking Primer to help guide their efforts. The primer describes the risks and benefits of a wide range of tactics, including subscription models and micropayment models, that can be employed,” he said.
The impact on other marketing channels is unclear. Does the more difficult ad landscape increase the spend for SEO, email, social and so on? While he is unclear if there has been a real impact to date, “presumably other channels that can demonstrate their effectiveness would secure increased spend, if digital ad inventory decreased dramatically because of blocking.”
“Before that happened, it’s likely that the price of digital ads would increase as volume decreased,” he added.
What about agencies?
If blocking ads reaches the same fever pitch here in North America and Europe as it has in the East, I can see many paid media reps stating, “Brother, can you spare a dime?” It’s quite difficult to know how successful all of the moves by Google and the IAB will be in slowing the adoption of mobile ad blocking. I, for one, believe it will eventually be on the majority of mobile devices.
I reached out to Andrew Goodman, founder of Page Zero Media, for an agency take on what comes next. His thoughts: “As device-specific computing gives way to futuristic home and mobile concepts, the Internet of Things, voice search, facial recognition, AI and machine learning, etc., the whole concept of interrupting people with advertising may be undermined.”
In the future, Goodman sees companies like Apple and Microsoft potentially in an advantageous position since they “can lean heavily on business models that provide function to consumers, rather than relying heavily on advertising to supplement whatever consumers might pay for function.”
Goodman sees “many current ad models and agencies as doomed within five years, unless they find new stuff to do.”
Closing thoughts
I don’t think ad blocking is going anywhere anytime soon. In fact, I’m predicting that in spite of all the measures the IAB and its members have taken to slow down the demand for ad blockers, mobile blocking will eventually be as common in the United States as it is in the East.
Efforts to slow the outbreak will delay the rate at which it’s adopted. However, as more and more US sites attempt to monetize their mobile content, mobile blocking will inevitably lose the war. For many users, this is a win-win scenario. They’ll see better and less annoying ads overall thanks to the CBA efforts — with or without a blocker in play.
Not to sound too unsympathetic, but I’m not breaking out a violin to play “My heart bleeds for Google and Facebook.” Even though it might put a dent in their pocketbooks, I’m predicting they’ll still come out of it just fine. I’ll play that violin for the many publishers who are deserving and in need of those ad dollars.
As for the Google “ad blocker,” I don’t think even Vegas would carry odds on whether or not that will block video ads from YouTube. Once upon a time, pop-ups were a big problem, and you could download a pop-up blocker plugin to prevent them — until most of the browsers included it by default. In this example, you solved the problem and eliminated a step for the end user.
I get the feeling that the announcement to incorporate the blocker into Chrome is a play to keep the unenlightened in the dark a bit longer. This way they can say, “Hey, yeah, I block ads” when in actuality, they don’t even know what a real blocker does. I don’t think this will have the prescribed effect they believe it will for very long.
I would love it if people began to embrace ad blockers as an effective protest tool. Hate fake news? Completely block the ads on that publication! You don’t have to cause a stink and hope advertisers pull their ads; you have the power with the click of a button to create the same effect.
Just remember to make sure you whitelist those publications you believe are deserving; many desperately need it.
As for the pubs that put up walls for ad blockers, I only see that as a Band-Aid that is easily peeled off. I can see an interesting future if, in fact, many large news sources go subscription only. I can almost see a Napster or BitTorrent for news emerging so that people can consume news without paying for it. Walls generally keep people out, though, not encourage them to walk a few miles to find another entrance.
I believe that the decrease of paid ads puts an increased importance on areas such as social, search, email and so on. Getting your content in front of a user will take more skills than bid, tools or resources to keep auctioning. I don’t know of many that consider an organic Google result for a term to be an ad — and that, in my opinion, is how the future of paid media, on the whole, should look: as innocuous as an answer that Alexa would give to the asker. Having a true, number one position for an important phrase really can’t be more valuable in a future without easily acquired sponsored ads, can it?
I would love to hear your thoughts on where you think this will all end up. Be sure to check out my video breakdown of the article as well:
Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.
About The Author
Anthony Muller is one of the best-kept secrets in the SEO industry at the enterprise level. He is the founder of ZenSEM and, for over 17 years, the Zen Search Engine Marketer has gained clients through C-level referrals for the most part. He has worked with and coordinated the search strategies for many of the largest names in media, retail, and politics.
For those who missed it, Whitespark’s overhaul of the US Local Search Ecosystem interactive tool was recently released, and it does a fantastic job of showing how vast and complex the search industry has become. The ecosystem visualizes the web of search engines, data providers, publishers, directories and other businesses that use local data about businesses to power one simple action that people do every day: search online.
For example, the infographic identifies Infogroup, Acxiom, Neustar/Localeze and Factual as the primary data aggregators, which collect and validate location data from businesses and share that data with publishers such as Apple, Bing, Foursquare and Google. (I refer to data aggregators and large publishers collectively as data amplifiers because they share a business’s location data not just directly with searchers, but also with other apps, tools, websites and businesses that, in turn, reshare that data to people across the digital world.)
In Whitespark’s words, the ecosystem “shows how business information is distributed online, who the primary data providers are, how search engines use the data, and how it flows.” The interactive tool helps you understand the importance of sharing accurate location data and the consequences of maintaining inaccurate data.
For example, because data aggregators influence a web of businesses across the ecosystem, it’s imperative that businesses meet the data formatting requirements of each aggregator. And as you can see, the ecosystem is complex:
The Local Search Ecosystem [click to enlarge]
Local search expert David Mihm originally developed this infographic in 2009, and over the years, the ecosystem has changed dramatically to reflect the rich palette of destinations that people weave together throughout the process of discovery, as well as the number of companies that influence whether a business’s location data appears as it should when, say, a searcher finds them on Facebook, Yelp or Uber.
A post on the Whitespark blog by Nyagoslav Zhekov dramatizes this evolution, tracing some of the businesses that have joined and departed. For instance, back in 2009, Apple did not even appear on the ecosystem, and Myspace did. In 2017, Apple is one of the principal data amplifiers, and Myspace is not a factor. You can tell by a quick glance of the 2009 version of the infographic how far the industry as grown:
Now, here’s the interesting part: As far-reaching as the new infographic is, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. The infographic does not come close to identifying all the companies that license business information from data amplifiers or use it as a starting point to build out their own curated business directory. For instance, a quick glance at the following three lists of local citation sources shows dozens of additional places where business information exists:
Many of the businesses that appear on these lists overlap with those on Whitespark’s local search ecosystem, and they have the same role: receiving and sharing location data that influences which locations appear in search results. But many names on the top citations lists didn’t make the cut and are not part of the infographic. Why? Because of two factors that influence each other:
Consumers are using search in more far-reaching and sophisticated ways. They’re using apps, social media sites, websites, search engines and a host of other touch points to do increasingly refined searches for things to do, places to go, services to use and things to buy. They expect the digital world to provide instant access to restaurants, plumbers, museums, tattoo parlors, places for Magic the Gathering meet-ups, places to find spoken poetry and so on. Because of this behavior, the thousands of mobile app platforms, ad networks, navigation systems, data services, social media companies, search engines, directories and so on currently using business information provided by the data amplifiers would make the infographic difficult to comprehend — similar to the Marketing Technology Landscape.
At the same time, the ephemeral nature of many of these tools means that the infographic would rapidly be out of date as the various startups or branches of larger organizations either sunset or consolidate into a larger entity. I find it interesting that the fundamental reason the infographic can never be a truly representative look at the scale of the local search ecosystem is the exact reason that focusing your location data management on the data amplifiers is so critical today — something the infographic illustrates well.
The 2017 local search ecosystem is a brilliant foundation to get businesses grounded in the most influential sources of location data. But as the above examples demonstrate, the scope of location data companies far exceeds the Whitespark infographic. Put another way: Consider each wedge on the infographic to be a gateway to even more specialty sites by category.
The scope of location data directories, publishers and aggregators can seem overwhelming. But if you manage multiple brick-and-mortar storefronts, don’t despair. You need not have a presence on every directory on the lists I’ve cited. It’s far more important to focus your efforts on building relationships with data amplifiers. When you share your data with the core aggregators and publishers, you create two advantages for yourself:
Amplifiers do the heavy lifting for you by disseminating your data among all the places that require it, however obscure, where your data appears.
You stay up-to-date on the emerging technologies and products that the data amplifiers create. Google alone constantly updates its algorithms and products to improve search. By having a relationship with Google — such as publishing your data on Google My Business — you are on the ground floor when product updates happen and when Google launches new products.
Understand the scope and richness of the location data ecosystem. Make sure you are constantly optimizing your data and content to be found everywhere. And let the data amplifiers help you succeed across the ecosystem.
Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
About The Author
Adam Dorfman is the Senior Vice President of Product & Technology at SIM Partners where he leads the teams responsible for the best in class local automation platform Velocity. Follow him on Twitter @phixed.
Put simply, black hat SEO includes any techniques that are against Google’s guidelines.
Some people view them as a fast track to achieve higher rankings.
In fact, many SEO practitioners believe black hat SEO tactics are useful and they encourage others to use them.
Some common black hat SEO practices involve:
cloaked content
automated link spamming
keyword stuffing
use of private blog networks (PBNs)
forum and social bookmarking
profile link spamming
and more.
Make no mistake, however:
If your site uses black hat SEO, and Google finds out algorithmically or manually, you will be penalized.
Sometimes, you may notice a site that ranks well and clearly uses these black hat techniques without penalty.
This can (and has) misled some SEO pros into reconsidering whether it’s worth a move to the dark side of black hat SEO.
Instead of immediately believing that these black hat techniques are good ideas just because you find them working on a certain website, let’s try to understand why situations like this happen.
Here are six reasons why a site using black hat SEO tactics may still rank well in search engine results.
1. The SEO Campaign Is Still in an Early Stage
SEO is a marathon, not a sprint.
Many black hat SEO techniques will cause a sudden boost in rankings.
This allows black hat SEO practitioners to provide much faster short-term results.
But these quick results will also disappear quickly.
If the sudden improvement in rankings was shown in a presentation, a conference, or a meeting with someone that only saw the rise in ranking, and never looked at how it progressed in the future, they will never see the performance in the long run, and will tend to believe only what they saw in the short period of time thinking it is safe to do this in the long haul.
Many black hat SEO practitioners are even aware of this yet do it anyway.
Why?
Some of them do the churn and burn type of SEO, where they typically can be ad publishers or affiliate marketers*; doing SEO on their own websites, on their own domain name. If the site gets a sudden boost, makes a profit, then crashes down in rankings and gets banned, they simply throw away the domain and start over with a new one.
It’s great that some random black hat SEO guy did something that gave quick, immediate gains.
But that doesn’t mean you can do it with your SEO clients.
You want to make sure your clients remain in the search results for the long run.
Slow and steady progress is better than quick and unstable growth that may give risky results.
*Not all affiliate marketers and ad publishers are black hat SEOs. But many SEOs that do the churn and burn are often affiliate marketers or ad publishers because they are not invested in the long-term survival of a domain name.
2. Some Industries Are Competitive & Spammier Than Others
Many industries use aggressive marketing strategies.
You’ve likely seen some of the largest offenders in your email spam folder.
Oftentimes, the people participating in industries that do aggressive black hat SEO typically use every digital marketing channel aggressively.
Take, for example, industries such as adult entertainment, online casino, prescription medicine, and even mortgage and loans. These fields often include black hat SEO as part of their online marketing arsenal.**
So many of the sites within these particular industries use black hat SEO tactics. Google doesn’t really have much of a choice other than to include these black hat sites in the top ranking simply because there is no one else to choose.
SEOs that see this in practice may initially believe the black hat practices work, especially when every one of the top results in a competitive market is using black hat strategies.
Fortunately, most of the tactics used in industries saturated with black hat practices simply won’t work in less aggressive industries.
What are the chance of you ever getting close to the top ranking sites using spammy tactics (as defined by Google)? Slim – especially for the long run.
**Sometimes the companies in these industries aren’t the ones doing black hat SEO, but it is the resellers, dealers, distributors, or affiliates of these companies.
3. The Targeted Market Is in a Less Competitive Geographic Area
When listening to conversations with other SEO professionals from other countries in casual discussions, to online forum chat rooms, and even formal conference presentations, you’ll sometimes notice one or two SEOs preaching about how they believe black hat techniques work.
They will show complete case studies and actual results; therefore, you cannot deny the fact that it did work.
But, don’t be tricked by this.
Not all countries are at the same SEO maturity level.
Thus, the lack of competition alone provides an environment in which a site doing any kind of SEO will rank higher than those with no SEO at all, even if the SEO is black hat.
There are still some countries that can get away with these techniques, not because Google has a different algorithm in each country (although they do have small tweaks here and there), but because there are far fewer websites competing for rankings.
When listening to other people about their black hat successes, try to consider all factors of their situation, including geographic location of the target audience.
4. They Are Targeting a Very Long-Tailed Keyword
Black hat or white hat SEO, if the keyword phrase is long enough, it is more than likely that this phrase is very unique to the site you are optimizing; therefore, you are likely to rank for this term regardless of the type of SEO you utilize.
If someone is preaching how great black hat SEO is – and is presenting their ranking for an eight-word keyword phrase that includes a word or two that is totally unique – that is not impressive at all.
Almost anyone doing SEO can achieve this.
Most SEOs are knowledgeable enough to not fall for this sham, but I know there are still many SEO newbies that might go down the wrong path if they are not fully aware.
5. Even If They Use Some Black Hat SEO Tactics, They Are Overpowered by Their White Hat SEO Tactics
Many SEO campaigns involve a variety of tactics and strategies.
SEO practitioners doing multiple things simultaneously can get confused about which tactics are actually helping SEO performance the most.
If an SEO did a hundred white hat tactics and one black hat tactic resulting in outstanding rankings, the white hat SEO might be overpowering the black hat SEO at a large scale.
But, depending on who is interpreting these SEO ranking factors, some might be putting too much focus on the black hat tactics identified and failing to look at the white hat tactics implemented, likewise falsely attributing the ranking success to the black hat tactics.
When looking at a site’s SEO performance, and even if you identified some black hat SEO going on, try to assess all ranking factors involved.
6. Google Hasn’t Detected It Yet and No One Has Reported It
Black hat SEO tactics tend to be be very old.
Google is well aware of these methods.
They don’t work anymore in the long term.
Yet, there are times when SEO practitioners discover a new black hat tactic and seem to get away with it.
The tactic’s newness is like a loophole that Google just doesn’t know how to handle it yet.
Other black hat SEOs may notice it, see it’s working, and start doing it as well.
When it starts to become a popular black hat SEO tactic, more SEOs start finding out about it and some may report it to Google’s Spam Report.
As more reports are submitted, and Google becomes aware of it, they might start taking manual actions and begin working on an algorithm update to prevent these tactics from working.
This is the whole basis of many of the biggest Google algorithm updates.
Google’s algorithms today help prevent many identified black hat SEO tactics that were rampant in the past.
Consider All Factors of the Situation Before Deciding If an SEO Technique Works
This advice applies to not only assessing black hat technique but any technique in general.
Conduct a good scientific analysis and look at all factors possible to be able to draw the right conclusions.
If a theory comes out of your observations, just remember a good theory is a repeatable one.
If you think a specific factor is the main cause of a ranking change, you can confirm that by trying your best to keep other factors constant while observing the effect of a specific factor and changing it.
At last week’s 
Since the mid ’90s, the internet has been filled with examples of something tiny becoming something big — and changing everything. Ad blocking is another of those stories that will be told, in years to come, around smoldering tweet-fires by grumpy old digital marketers like me.
