8-8-15, 3:28PM PST
Google Analytics Blog
BT Increases Sales Volume and Efficiency Using DoubleClick Bid Manager With Google Analytics Premium
Cross-posted on the DoubleClick Advertiser Blog
Modern marketers live in a world that’s dominated by data. Advancements in programmatic buying enable marketers to leverage data and analytics to connect precisely, in real time. Advertisers who are smart about organizing, segmenting, and acting on this data are realizing the benefits of more personalized marketing. BT, a leading telecommunications firm in the UK, did just that and saw fantastic results.
BT wanted to increase the relevance of their remarketing campaigns by creating more precise audience lists. With the help of their media agency Maxus, BT found that using Google Analytics Premium with DoubleClick Bid Manager offered the ideal solution.
BT wanted to increase the relevance of their remarketing campaigns by creating more precise audience lists. With the help of their media agency Maxus, BT found that using Google Analytics Premium with DoubleClick Bid Manager offered the ideal solution.
Google Analytics Premium gave BT the ability to create granular audience segments based on site behavior metrics such as recency, frequency, referral source, and stage of cart abandonment. Once these audience lists were created, the native integration between Google Analytics Premium and DoubleClick Bid Manager meant they could be shared with the platform to make more precise media buys in just a few clicks.
Using Google Analytics Premium with DoubleClick Bid Manager put Maxus and BT in the driver’s seat of their media campaigns. They not only gleaned full transparency with a single customer view and de-duplicated metrics across all channels, but also saw better measurement through unified reporting, and the ability to optimize based on the results.
”Our goals were to build up ‘best practices’ of programmatic display remarketing techniques with a focus on driving post-click sales,” says Alison Thorburn, Head of Digital DR Media at BT. “The DoubleClick suite of products enabled us to do this quickly and efficiently as audience data can be easily organized and utilized.”
The new analytics-driven approach produced a 69% increase in post-click sales and an 87% reduction in post-click cost per acquisition compared to the previous year’s remarketing activity. It also compared favorably to the remarketing activity that ran simultaneously outside of DoubleClick Bid Manager; post-click sales were 30% higher and post-click cost per acquisition was 42% lower. BT has now consolidated its display remarketing through DoubleClick BidManager.
Read the full case study here.
Posted by-
Kelley Sternhagen, Product Marketing, Google Analytics
Kelly Cox, Product Marketing, DoubleClick
Google Ads Developer Blog
Improved Upgraded URLs validation in AdWords API
Waiting to see whether or not your ads have been approved can be time-consuming. That's why we're improving the validation logic during ad creation to “fail fast” for one common invalid URL case.
Currently, with new Upgraded URLs, an ad with a final URL domain that doesn't match the display URL domain will be disapproved. Starting on August 12th, 2015, rather than allowing these ads to be submitted for approval, the AdWords API will return an error for any request attempting to create an ad where the final URL domain doesn't match the display URL domain. This will allow you to fix these issues faster and get your ads up and running sooner.
As usual, if you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please contact us via the forum or the Ads Developers Plus Page.
- Michael Cloonan, AdWords API Team
Currently, with new Upgraded URLs, an ad with a final URL domain that doesn't match the display URL domain will be disapproved. Starting on August 12th, 2015, rather than allowing these ads to be submitted for approval, the AdWords API will return an error for any request attempting to create an ad where the final URL domain doesn't match the display URL domain. This will allow you to fix these issues faster and get your ads up and running sooner.
As usual, if you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please contact us via the forum or the Ads Developers Plus Page.
- Michael Cloonan, AdWords API Team
Google Webmaster Central Blog
Introducing the Search Analytics API
With the great feedback from the Search Analytics feature in Google Search Console, we've decided to make this data accessible for developers via API. We hope that the Search Analytics API will help you to bake search performance data into your apps and tools.
If you've used any of Google’s other APIs, or maybe one of the existing Search Console APIs, then getting started will be easy! The how-to page has examples in Python that you can use as recipes for your own programs. For example, you can use the API to:
Verify the presence of data (what's the most recent date you can request?)Top 10 queries by click countTop 10 pagesTop 10 queries in IndiaTop 10 mobile queries in India
What will you cook up with the new API? We're curious to see how new tools and apps that use this API will satisfy the hunger for even more information about your site's performance in Google Search! If you've integrated this API into a tool, we'd love to hear about it in the comments. If you've run into any questions about the API, feel free to drop by our webmaster help forum.
If you've used any of Google’s other APIs, or maybe one of the existing Search Console APIs, then getting started will be easy! The how-to page has examples in Python that you can use as recipes for your own programs. For example, you can use the API to:
Verify the presence of data (what's the most recent date you can request?)Top 10 queries by click countTop 10 pagesTop 10 queries in IndiaTop 10 mobile queries in India
What will you cook up with the new API? We're curious to see how new tools and apps that use this API will satisfy the hunger for even more information about your site's performance in Google Search! If you've integrated this API into a tool, we'd love to hear about it in the comments. If you've run into any questions about the API, feel free to drop by our webmaster help forum.
Google Ads Developer Blog
Manual ad break playback in the IMA SDKs
We recently launched manual ad break playback across our iOS, Android, HTML5, and Flash SDKs. For more info on what this means and how to use it, read on!
What is manual ad break playback?
Under a standard IMA SDK implementation, when an ad rules or VMAP response is returned, the SDK will automatically play each ad break at its cue point. With manual ad break playback, the SDK will instead fire an event when it’s time to play an ad break, and let you decide if or when you’d like to play it.
What are the implications of this change?
If you’re happy with your current ad rules or VMAP performance, this change doesn’t require you to do anything - your implementation will continue to work just as it does now. If you’d like more fine-tuned control over ad break playback timing, then we recommend using this feature.
What are the benefits of this change?
We see two major areas in which this change will help publishers. The first is when a user starts a stream somewhere in the middle of the content instead of at the beginning. (The most common scenario is that the user watched part of the video previously, left the app or page, and returned to continue watching the rest of the video). With a standard implementation, the user will be greeted by (in some cases) a pre-roll, followed by the most recent mid-roll that they watched previously, then the content. By using manual ad break playback you can prevent the pre- or mid-roll (or both) from playing so that the user can go straight to the content, and then resume mid-rolls when the user sees their first mid-roll break for the new session.
The second major use case is misaligned ad breaks. If you’re playing long form content with mid-rolls, and your video fades in and out for mid-roll breaks, you want to make sure that your ad breaks properly align with those fades. In some cases, publishers have told us that the ad break scheduling changes slightly between pieces of content, causing the ad to cut off content for some streams. With this new system, if you know exactly when an ad break should play, you can listen for the AD_BREAK_READY event and delay the ad break playback until the exact time your stream is ready for it.
How do I implement this new feature?
We have guides for each of the SDKs on implementing this new feature:
HTML5 Android iOS Flash
As always, if you have any questions feel free to contact us via the support forum.
- Shawn Busolits, IMA SDK Team
What is manual ad break playback?
Under a standard IMA SDK implementation, when an ad rules or VMAP response is returned, the SDK will automatically play each ad break at its cue point. With manual ad break playback, the SDK will instead fire an event when it’s time to play an ad break, and let you decide if or when you’d like to play it.
What are the implications of this change?
If you’re happy with your current ad rules or VMAP performance, this change doesn’t require you to do anything - your implementation will continue to work just as it does now. If you’d like more fine-tuned control over ad break playback timing, then we recommend using this feature.
What are the benefits of this change?
We see two major areas in which this change will help publishers. The first is when a user starts a stream somewhere in the middle of the content instead of at the beginning. (The most common scenario is that the user watched part of the video previously, left the app or page, and returned to continue watching the rest of the video). With a standard implementation, the user will be greeted by (in some cases) a pre-roll, followed by the most recent mid-roll that they watched previously, then the content. By using manual ad break playback you can prevent the pre- or mid-roll (or both) from playing so that the user can go straight to the content, and then resume mid-rolls when the user sees their first mid-roll break for the new session.
The second major use case is misaligned ad breaks. If you’re playing long form content with mid-rolls, and your video fades in and out for mid-roll breaks, you want to make sure that your ad breaks properly align with those fades. In some cases, publishers have told us that the ad break scheduling changes slightly between pieces of content, causing the ad to cut off content for some streams. With this new system, if you know exactly when an ad break should play, you can listen for the AD_BREAK_READY event and delay the ad break playback until the exact time your stream is ready for it.
How do I implement this new feature?
We have guides for each of the SDKs on implementing this new feature:
HTML5 Android iOS Flash
As always, if you have any questions feel free to contact us via the support forum.
- Shawn Busolits, IMA SDK Team
Google Ads Developer Blog
Manual ad break playback in the IMA SDKs
We recently launched manual ad break playback across our iOS, Android, HTML5, and Flash SDKs. For more info on what this means and how to use it, read on!
What is manual ad break playback?
Under a standard IMA SDK implementation, when an ad rules or VMAP response is returned, the SDK will automatically play each ad break at its cue point. With manual ad break playback, the SDK will instead fire an event when it’s time to play an ad break, and let you decide if or when you’d like to play it.
What are the implications of this change?
If you’re happy with your current ad rules or VMAP performance, this change doesn’t require you to do anything - your implementation will continue to work just as it does now. If you’d like more fine-tuned control over ad break playback timing, then we recommend using this feature.
What are the benefits of this change?
We see two major areas in which this change will help publishers. The first is when a user starts a stream somewhere in the middle of the content instead of at the beginning. (The most common scenario is that the user watched part of the video previously, left the app or page, and returned to continue watching the rest of the video). With a standard implementation, the user will be greeted by (in some cases) a pre-roll, followed by the most recent mid-roll that they watched previously, then the content. By using manual ad break playback you can prevent the pre- or mid-roll (or both) from playing so that the user can go straight to the content, and then resume mid-rolls when the user sees their first mid-roll break for the new session.
The second major use case is misaligned ad breaks. If you’re playing long form content with mid-rolls, and your video fades in and out for mid-roll breaks, you want to make sure that your ad breaks properly align with those fades. In some cases, publishers have told us that the ad break scheduling changes slightly between pieces of content, causing the ad to cut off content for some streams. With this new system, if you know exactly when an ad break should play, you can listen for the AD_BREAK_READY event and delay the ad break playback until the exact time your stream is ready for it.
How do I implement this new feature?
We have guides for each of the SDKs on implementing this new feature:
HTML5 Android iOS Flash
As always, if you have any questions feel free to contact us via the support forum.
- Shawn Busolits, IMA SDK Team
What is manual ad break playback?
Under a standard IMA SDK implementation, when an ad rules or VMAP response is returned, the SDK will automatically play each ad break at its cue point. With manual ad break playback, the SDK will instead fire an event when it’s time to play an ad break, and let you decide if or when you’d like to play it.
What are the implications of this change?
If you’re happy with your current ad rules or VMAP performance, this change doesn’t require you to do anything - your implementation will continue to work just as it does now. If you’d like more fine-tuned control over ad break playback timing, then we recommend using this feature.
What are the benefits of this change?
We see two major areas in which this change will help publishers. The first is when a user starts a stream somewhere in the middle of the content instead of at the beginning. (The most common scenario is that the user watched part of the video previously, left the app or page, and returned to continue watching the rest of the video). With a standard implementation, the user will be greeted by (in some cases) a pre-roll, followed by the most recent mid-roll that they watched previously, then the content. By using manual ad break playback you can prevent the pre- or mid-roll (or both) from playing so that the user can go straight to the content, and then resume mid-rolls when the user sees their first mid-roll break for the new session.
The second major use case is misaligned ad breaks. If you’re playing long form content with mid-rolls, and your video fades in and out for mid-roll breaks, you want to make sure that your ad breaks properly align with those fades. In some cases, publishers have told us that the ad break scheduling changes slightly between pieces of content, causing the ad to cut off content for some streams. With this new system, if you know exactly when an ad break should play, you can listen for the AD_BREAK_READY event and delay the ad break playback until the exact time your stream is ready for it.
How do I implement this new feature?
We have guides for each of the SDKs on implementing this new feature:
HTML5 Android iOS Flash
As always, if you have any questions feel free to contact us via the support forum.
- Shawn Busolits, IMA SDK Team
AdWords Agency Blog
Top 100 Brands Report: Insight into Brand Content on YouTube
YouTube recently celebrated its 10th birthday, and with this milestone in mind we reflected on how YouTube has become a daily part of the lives of millions of people. Communities, both small and large, explore their passions on YouTube. Car buyers check out potential purchases with in-action auto videos, gamers discover the latest games through a deep library of trailers, and new moms gain insights around parenting from both brands and mommy vloggers.
Ten years in, YouTube is a daily go-to destination for people who seek to connect with others around their passions and interests. In a recent survey of 18-34 year old millennials, YouTube was most chosen out of their top 3 favorite video destinations to watch online videos.1 Statistics like this show why YouTube is growing faster than it has in years—watch time is up 60% across devices, and 100% on mobile year over year.2
Viewers are also coming to YouTube specifically to watch content from brands. In fact, four of the top 10 trending videos on all of YouTube in 2014 were created by brands.3 We recently partnered with Pixability to analyze viewership and publishing trends from the Top 100 Brands as defined by the Interbrand 2014 Best Global Brands ranking.
Viewership of brand content is growing
Brands are seeing an explosion of engagement and views on YouTube. Views of branded content of the top 100 brands have nearly doubled in the last 12 months: consumers have watched their videos more than 40B times in total,4 with over 18B of those views taking place in the last year.5 And brands are building sustained relationships with their viewers on YouTube: brand channel subscriptions are up 47% year over year.6 Brands like Toyota have experienced this engagement growth firsthand:
“The benefit of a diverse platform like YouTube is they have an unparalleled ability to reach a variety of demographics,” says Dionne Colvin-Lovely, Director, Traditional & New Media, Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A. “That aligns very well with Toyota’s diverse consumer and product lineup. YouTube allows our brand’s message to break through in an impactful way, and it offers great metrics to see if the content is resonating with the intended audience.”
Brands are becoming more active on YouTube
Brands are now adopting similar content strategies as some of our most successful creators on YouTube. They’re actively managing their YouTube channels, and publishing new content on a regular basis to engage viewers and keep them coming back. According to Pixability, the Interbrand Top 100 brands are collectively uploading a video to YouTube every 18.5 minutes.7 Also a fun fact: Thursday is the most popular day for uploads.8
In terms of content, 10% of brand videos posted to YouTube in the last year are over 10 minutes long.9 This indicates that brands are creating made-for-YouTube content, which tends to perform better than repurposed material. Brands are realizing if they have an authentic voice, they can engage people familiar with their brand and also attract new customers. Coca-Cola is also using YouTube as a platform on which to build relationships and engage consumers with unique, relevant content:
“We love the opportunity YouTube gives Coca-Cola to interact, build relationships and share stories that are authentic and relevant to the brand,” said Chris Bigda, Director, Connections Planning & Investment, Coca-Cola North America. “We are seeing continued success on the platform, uploading higher quality content and achieving better results for it. We are really proud to be part of the YouTube community and excited by the partnership.”
Wayfair, for example, is using YouTube to experiment with new content and reach untapped demographics:
“YouTube has become an incredibly valuable marketing tool for Wayfair by providing us with a platform to deliver new and authentic content to our customers. It's exciting to see that we're also reaching new audiences for our portfolio of brands,” said Ben Young, Media Manager- Wayfair TV and Video. “Despite our success to date, it feels like we’ve only just scratched the surface with the YouTube platform.”
Brands are investing more on YouTube
In addition to brands creating more content for YouTube, we’re also seeing that brands are investing more in video ads to promote this content. The average spend of the top 100 video advertisers, as defined by media spend, is up 60%,10 and the number of advertisers investing in video ads is up 40% year over year.11 By investing in YouTube, these advertisers aren’t just building their brand, they’re also contributing to the YouTube ecosystem.
These first 10 years are just the beginning—we’re looking forward to seeing how brands will continue to evolve and innovate on YouTube over the next 10.
Posted by Cenk Bulbul, Head of Strategy and Insights, YouTube Ads Marketing
Sources
1. BAVC Consulting & YouTube Marketing, Custom Survey Study Millennials (150 18-34 year olds), US data July 2015
2. YouTube Global Data, Q2 2015 compared to Q2 2014
3. YouTube Trends Data, 2014
4. Top 100 Brands Pixability research, all time global data (2005-2015)
5. Top 100 Brands Pixability research, June 2014 to June 2015
6. Top 100 Brands Pixability research, Jan to June 2014 and Jan to June 2015
7. Top 100 Brands Pixability research, Jan to June 2015
8. Top 100 Brands Pixability research, all time global data (2005-2015)
9. Top 100 Brands Pixability research, global data June 2014 to June 2015
10. Google Global Data, April to June 2014 and April to June 2015, Top 100 advertisers list determined by media spend.
11. Google Global Data, April to June 2014 and April to June 2015
AdWords Agency Blog
Top 100 Brands Report: Insight into Brand Content on YouTube
YouTube recently celebrated its 10th birthday, and with this milestone in mind we reflected on how YouTube has become a daily part of the lives of millions of people. Communities, both small and large, explore their passions on YouTube. Car buyers check out potential purchases with in-action auto videos, gamers discover the latest games through a deep library of trailers, and new moms gain insights around parenting from both brands and mommy vloggers.
Ten years in, YouTube is a daily go-to destination for people who seek to connect with others around their passions and interests. In a recent survey of 18-34 year old millennials, YouTube was most chosen out of their top 3 favorite video destinations to watch online videos.1 Statistics like this show why YouTube is growing faster than it has in years—watch time is up 60% across devices, and 100% on mobile year over year.2
Viewers are also coming to YouTube specifically to watch content from brands. In fact, four of the top 10 trending videos on all of YouTube in 2014 were created by brands.3 We recently partnered with Pixability to analyze viewership and publishing trends from the Top 100 Brands as defined by the Interbrand 2014 Best Global Brands ranking.
Viewership of brand content is growing
Brands are seeing an explosion of engagement and views on YouTube. Views of branded content of the top 100 brands have nearly doubled in the last 12 months: consumers have watched their videos more than 40B times in total,4 with over 18B of those views taking place in the last year.5 And brands are building sustained relationships with their viewers on YouTube: brand channel subscriptions are up 47% year over year.6 Brands like Toyota have experienced this engagement growth firsthand:
“The benefit of a diverse platform like YouTube is they have an unparalleled ability to reach a variety of demographics,” says Dionne Colvin-Lovely, Director, Traditional & New Media, Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A. “That aligns very well with Toyota’s diverse consumer and product lineup. YouTube allows our brand’s message to break through in an impactful way, and it offers great metrics to see if the content is resonating with the intended audience.”
Brands are becoming more active on YouTube
Brands are now adopting similar content strategies as some of our most successful creators on YouTube. They’re actively managing their YouTube channels, and publishing new content on a regular basis to engage viewers and keep them coming back. According to Pixability, the Interbrand Top 100 brands are collectively uploading a video to YouTube every 18.5 minutes.7 Also a fun fact: Thursday is the most popular day for uploads.8
In terms of content, 10% of brand videos posted to YouTube in the last year are over 10 minutes long.9 This indicates that brands are creating made-for-YouTube content, which tends to perform better than repurposed material. Brands are realizing if they have an authentic voice, they can engage people familiar with their brand and also attract new customers. Coca-Cola is also using YouTube as a platform on which to build relationships and engage consumers with unique, relevant content:
“We love the opportunity YouTube gives Coca-Cola to interact, build relationships and share stories that are authentic and relevant to the brand,” said Chris Bigda, Director, Connections Planning & Investment, Coca-Cola North America. “We are seeing continued success on the platform, uploading higher quality content and achieving better results for it. We are really proud to be part of the YouTube community and excited by the partnership.”
Wayfair, for example, is using YouTube to experiment with new content and reach untapped demographics:
“YouTube has become an incredibly valuable marketing tool for Wayfair by providing us with a platform to deliver new and authentic content to our customers. It's exciting to see that we're also reaching new audiences for our portfolio of brands,” said Ben Young, Media Manager- Wayfair TV and Video. “Despite our success to date, it feels like we’ve only just scratched the surface with the YouTube platform.”
Brands are investing more on YouTube
In addition to brands creating more content for YouTube, we’re also seeing that brands are investing more in video ads to promote this content. The average spend of the top 100 video advertisers, as defined by media spend, is up 60%,10 and the number of advertisers investing in video ads is up 40% year over year.11 By investing in YouTube, these advertisers aren’t just building their brand, they’re also contributing to the YouTube ecosystem.
These first 10 years are just the beginning—we’re looking forward to seeing how brands will continue to evolve and innovate on YouTube over the next 10.
Posted by Cenk Bulbul, Head of Strategy and Insights, YouTube Ads Marketing
Sources
1. BAVC Consulting & YouTube Marketing, Custom Survey Study Millennials (150 18-34 year olds), US data July 2015
2. YouTube Global Data, Q2 2015 compared to Q2 2014
3. YouTube Trends Data, 2014
4. Top 100 Brands Pixability research, all time global data (2005-2015)
5. Top 100 Brands Pixability research, June 2014 to June 2015
6. Top 100 Brands Pixability research, Jan to June 2014 and Jan to June 2015
7. Top 100 Brands Pixability research, Jan to June 2015
8. Top 100 Brands Pixability research, all time global data (2005-2015)
9. Top 100 Brands Pixability research, global data June 2014 to June 2015
10. Google Global Data, April to June 2014 and April to June 2015, Top 100 advertisers list determined by media spend.
11. Google Global Data, April to June 2014 and April to June 2015
Google Ads Developer Blog
Changes to DFP Reporting, now with more deprecation!
After our last round of spring cleaning, we've gone back to the drawing board to take another look at how we could make reporting better. There currently is an abundance of Dimensions, DimensionAttributes, and Columns (and more coming with each release), so in an effort to simplify the list of fields, we will be sunsetting the following reconciliation-related dimension attributes / columns in all versions. This will happen on September 1, 2015.
Columns with equivalent replacements: RECONCILIATION_LAST_DATE_TIME replaced by dimension attribute: PROPOSAL_LINE_ITEM_LAST_RECONCILIATION_DATE_TIME and LINE_ITEM_LAST_RECONCILIATION_DATE_TIMERECONCILIATION_RECONCILIATION_STATUS replaced by dimension attribute: PROPOSAL_LINE_ITEM_RECONCILIATION_STATUS and LINE_ITEM_RECONCILIATION_STATUS Columns without equivalent replacements:LINE_ITEM_RECONCILED_RATE (in
Columns with equivalent replacements: RECONCILIATION_LAST_DATE_TIME replaced by dimension attribute: PROPOSAL_LINE_ITEM_LAST_RECONCILIATION_DATE_TIME and LINE_ITEM_LAST_RECONCILIATION_DATE_TIMERECONCILIATION_RECONCILIATION_STATUS replaced by dimension attribute: PROPOSAL_LINE_ITEM_RECONCILIATION_STATUS and LINE_ITEM_RECONCILIATION_STATUS Columns without equivalent replacements:LINE_ITEM_RECONCILED_RATE (in
8-4-15 6:43pm PST
Google Ads Developer Blog
Announcing v2.2 of the DCM/DFA Reporting and Trafficking API
Today we are releasing v2.2 of the DCM/DFA Reporting and Trafficking API. Highlights of this release include: User requested enhancements: You asked and we listened! Based on your feedback, new fields--such as computed click-through URL for ad creative assignments--have been added. Placement search improvements: You can now search for placements and placement groups by start and end date. Ins tag support: When the new ins tag is enabled for your account, requests for iframe and javascript tags will return an updated tag format. We've introduced 4 new legacy tag values you can use to access the older versions of these tags, to ensure a smooth transition to the upgraded format. You can begin requesting these legacy tag values today, even if your account hasn't upgraded yet. Retiring older API versions
Along with this release, we're introducing a new deprecation schedule and announcing the deprecation of all versions prior to v2.1. Moving forward, we will generally only support 3 versions of the API and sunset the oldest version 4 months after a new release. In order to help developers adjust to this new schedule, we're providing an extended migration period for users of these newly deprecated versions:
Along with this release, we're introducing a new deprecation schedule and announcing the deprecation of all versions prior to v2.1. Moving forward, we will generally only support 3 versions of the API and sunset the oldest version 4 months after a new release. In order to help developers adjust to this new schedule, we're providing an extended migration period for users of these newly deprecated versions:
API Version
|
Deprecation Date
|
Sunset Date
|
v1
|
3 Aug 2015
|
Google Webmaster Central Blog
#NoHacked: How to recognise and protect yourself against social engineering
Today in our #NoHacked campaign, we’ll be talking about social engineering. Follow along with discussions on Twitter and Google+ using the #nohacked hashtag. (Part 1)
If you’ve spent some time on the web, you have more than likely encountered some form of social engineering. Social engineering attempts to extract confidential information from you by manipulating or tricking you in some way.
Phishing
You might be familiar with phishing, one of the most common forms of social engineering. Phishing sites and emails mimic legitimate sites and trick you into entering confidential information like your username and password into these sites. A recent study from Google found that some phishing sites can trick victims 45% of the time! Once a phishing site has your information, the information will either be sold or be used to manipulate your accounts. the owners will either sell it or use it to manipulate your accounts.
Other Forms of Social Engineering
As a site owner, phishing isn’t the only form of social engineering that you need to watch out for. One other form of social engineering comes from the software and tools used on your site. If you download or use any Content Management System (CMS), plug-ins, or add-ons, make sure that they come from reputable sources like directly from the developer’s site. Software from non-reputable sites can contain malicious exploits that allow hackers to gain access to your site.
For example, Webmaster Wanda was recently hired by Brandon’s Pet Palace to help create a site. After sketching some designs, Wanda starts compiling the software she needs to build the site. However, she finds out that Photo Frame Beautifier, one of her favorite plug-ins, has been taken off the official CMS plug-in site and that the developer has decided to stop supporting the plug-in. She does a quick search and finds a site that offers an archive of old plug-ins. She downloads the plug-in and uses it to finish the site. Two months later, a notification in Search Console notifies Wanda that her client’s site has been hacked. She quickly scrambles to fix the hacked content and finds the source of the compromise. It turns out the Photo Frame Beautifier plug-in was modified by a third party to allow malicious parties to access the site. She removed the plug-in, fixed the hacked content, secured her site from future attacks, and filed a reconsideration request in Search Console. As you can see, an inadvertent oversight by Wanda led to her client's site being compromised.
Protecting Yourself from Social Engineering Attacks
Social engineering is effective because it’s not obvious that there’s something wrong with what you’re doing. However, there are a few basic things you can do protect yourself from social engineering.
Stay vigilant: Whenever you enter confidential information online or install website software, have a healthy dose of skepticism. Check URLs to make sure you’re not typing confidential information into malicious sites. When installing website software make sure the software is coming from known, reputable sources like the developer’s site. Use two-factor authentication: Two-factor authentication like Google’s 2-Step Verification adds another layer of security that helps protect your account even if your password has been stolen. You should use two-factor authentication on all accounts where possible. We’ll be talking more in-depth next week about the benefits of two-factor authentication. Additional resources about social engineering:
Phishing
You might be familiar with phishing, one of the most common forms of social engineering. Phishing sites and emails mimic legitimate sites and trick you into entering confidential information like your username and password into these sites. A recent study from Google found that some phishing sites can trick victims 45% of the time! Once a phishing site has your information, the information will either be sold or be used to manipulate your accounts. the owners will either sell it or use it to manipulate your accounts.
Other Forms of Social Engineering
As a site owner, phishing isn’t the only form of social engineering that you need to watch out for. One other form of social engineering comes from the software and tools used on your site. If you download or use any Content Management System (CMS), plug-ins, or add-ons, make sure that they come from reputable sources like directly from the developer’s site. Software from non-reputable sites can contain malicious exploits that allow hackers to gain access to your site.
For example, Webmaster Wanda was recently hired by Brandon’s Pet Palace to help create a site. After sketching some designs, Wanda starts compiling the software she needs to build the site. However, she finds out that Photo Frame Beautifier, one of her favorite plug-ins, has been taken off the official CMS plug-in site and that the developer has decided to stop supporting the plug-in. She does a quick search and finds a site that offers an archive of old plug-ins. She downloads the plug-in and uses it to finish the site. Two months later, a notification in Search Console notifies Wanda that her client’s site has been hacked. She quickly scrambles to fix the hacked content and finds the source of the compromise. It turns out the Photo Frame Beautifier plug-in was modified by a third party to allow malicious parties to access the site. She removed the plug-in, fixed the hacked content, secured her site from future attacks, and filed a reconsideration request in Search Console. As you can see, an inadvertent oversight by Wanda led to her client's site being compromised.
Protecting Yourself from Social Engineering Attacks
Social engineering is effective because it’s not obvious that there’s something wrong with what you’re doing. However, there are a few basic things you can do protect yourself from social engineering.
Stay vigilant: Whenever you enter confidential information online or install website software, have a healthy dose of skepticism. Check URLs to make sure you’re not typing confidential information into malicious sites. When installing website software make sure the software is coming from known, reputable sources like the developer’s site. Use two-factor authentication: Two-factor authentication like Google’s 2-Step Verification adds another layer of security that helps protect your account even if your password has been stolen. You should use two-factor authentication on all accounts where possible. We’ll be talking more in-depth next week about the benefits of two-factor authentication. Additional resources about social engineering:
Learn more about how to protect yourself from phishing attacks Report a Phishing PageAvoid and report Google scams Identify "phishing" and "spoofing" emails
If you have any additional questions, you can post in the Webmaster Help Forums where a community of webmasters can help answer your questions. You can also join our Hangout on Air about Security on August 26.
If you have any additional questions, you can post in the Webmaster Help Forums where a community of webmasters can help answer your questions. You can also join our Hangout on Air about Security on August 26.
8-3-15 6:54am PST
Google Analytics Blog
Learn to optimize your tag implementation with Google Tag Manager Fundamentals
We're excited to announce that our next Analytics Academy course, Google Tag Manager Fundamentals, is now open for participation. Whether you’re a marketer, analyst, or developer, this course will teach you how Google Tag Manager can simplify the tag implementation and management process.
You'll join instructor Krista Seiden to explore topics through the lens of a fictional online retailer, The Great Outdoors and their Travel Adventures website. Using practical examples, she’ll show you how to use tools like Google Analytics and Google AdWords tags to improve your data collection process and advertising strategies.
By participating in the course, you’ll explore:
the core concepts and principles of tag management using Google Tag Managerhow to create website tags and manage firing triggershow to enhance your Google Analytics implementationthe importance of using the Data Layer to collect valuable data for analysishow to configure other marketing tags, like AdWords Conversion Tracking and Dynamic RemarketingWe're looking forward to your participation in this course!
Sign up for Google Tag Manager Fundamentals and start learning today.
Happy tagging!
Post By: Lizzie Pace & The Google Analytics Education Team
You'll join instructor Krista Seiden to explore topics through the lens of a fictional online retailer, The Great Outdoors and their Travel Adventures website. Using practical examples, she’ll show you how to use tools like Google Analytics and Google AdWords tags to improve your data collection process and advertising strategies.
By participating in the course, you’ll explore:
the core concepts and principles of tag management using Google Tag Managerhow to create website tags and manage firing triggershow to enhance your Google Analytics implementationthe importance of using the Data Layer to collect valuable data for analysishow to configure other marketing tags, like AdWords Conversion Tracking and Dynamic RemarketingWe're looking forward to your participation in this course!
Sign up for Google Tag Manager Fundamentals and start learning today.
Happy tagging!
Post By: Lizzie Pace & The Google Analytics Education Team
8-2-1 9:53am PST
Google Analytics Blog
Remarketing Lists for Search Ads, Powered by Google Analytics
Today we’re excited to announce you can use audiences (previously remarketing lists) created in Google Analytics to reach your customers on Google Search, with no tagging changes required.
Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA) allows you to tailor your search ads and based on your visitors' past activity on your website. Now you can leverage more than 200 Google Analytics dimensions and metrics to create and activate your audiences for remarketing, then use those audiences to reach and re-engage your customers with a consistent message across both Google Search and Display.
TransUnion cuts CPA in half with RLSA
In order to find more customers while reducing waste in their search campaigns, TransUnion, a leading financial services provider, used the audience creation capabilities in Google Analytics to spend more efficiently on Google Search.
TransUnion started by creating two audiences. The first was for new customers―those who had visited the site and started, but not completed a credit application. The other included customers who had already converted. Splitting the audience between new and existing customers allowed TransUnion to bid higher on Google search ads for new customers and spend less on converted customers.
The new RLSA capabilities in Google Analytics yielded impressive conversion rates and cost efficiencies for TransUnion's search campaigns. RLSA visitors had a lower bounce rate and viewed twice as many pages per session compared with regular visitors.
By using more tailored text with their remarketing lists, TransUnion increased their conversion rate by 65% and average transaction value by 58%. Meanwhile, CPCs for existing customers dropped 50%, resulting in a roughly 50% drop in their cost per transaction. Read the full case study here.
How to get started
Getting started with RLSA is easier than ever before thanks to Instant Activation. Within the Admin tab, simply click Property, then Tracking Info, and finally Data Collection. Ensure that Remarketing is set to ‘ON.’
Building Audiences
If you’d like to create new audiences, there are three ways to get started.
First, you can create a new audience using the Audience builder in the remarketing section of the Admin tab. Make sure you select the relevant AdWords account to share your audience with for remarketing.
Finally, you can get started quickly and easily by importing audiences from the Google Analytics Solutions Gallery.
Activating audiences in AdWords
Once you have shared an audience with AdWords, it will appear instantly in your AdWords Shared Library and will show eligible users in the column List size (Google search). Keep in mind that an audience must accumulate a minimum of 1,000 users before you can use it for remarketing on Google Search. To get started, follow the instructions in the AdWords Help Center.
Support for RLSA with Google Analytics is part of an ongoing investment to provide powerful ways to activate your customer insights in Google Analytics, along with recent features like Cohort Analysis, Lifetime Value Analysis, and Active User Reporting. Stay tuned for more announcements!
Happy Analyzing,
Lan Huang, Technical Lead, Google Analytics,
Xiaorui Gan, Technical Lead, Google Search Ads
Lan Huang, Technical Lead, Google Analytics,
Xiaorui Gan, Technical Lead, Google Search Ads
8-2-15 2:50pm PST
Google Ads Developer Blog
Removal of MatchType.BROAD_SESSION in AdWords API reports
On or shortly after August 24th, we will remove the BROAD_SESSION match type label from the MatchType column in the Search Query Performance and Paid & Organic Query reports. Instead, rows that formerly returned "broad (session-based)" will begin returning "broad".
To simplify the way we report on match types, this label will be removed from all of our reports, including historical reports. If you'd like to see how your keywords are currently matching to this label, download a copy of your Search terms report before August 24th, 2015.
This is a reporting change and will have no impact on the broad match serving behavior. You can learn more about the MatchType column in the AdWords Help Center.
As always, if you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please contact us via the forum or the Ads Developers Plus Page.
To simplify the way we report on match types, this label will be removed from all of our reports, including historical reports. If you'd like to see how your keywords are currently matching to this label, download a copy of your Search terms report before August 24th, 2015.
This is a reporting change and will have no impact on the broad match serving behavior. You can learn more about the MatchType column in the AdWords Help Center.
As always, if you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please contact us via the forum or the Ads Developers Plus Page.
- Michael Cloonan, AdWords API Team
8-1-15 1:34pm PST
AdWords Agency Blog
Learn how to design and build HTML5 with Google Web Designer
We dubbed last week #HTML5Week and Google Web Designer launched multiple HTML5 resources, hangouts and product updates to help make it easier to build all your ads in HTML5. Today, we are pleased to announce the launch of our Google Web Designer Certification exam and training resources.
The program consists of a </span>step-by-step eLearning takes you through the basics of Google Web Designer and helps you get trained quickly in building HTML5 ads using the tool. Once you finish the eLearning and build a few test ads, you can take a certification exam to test your knowledge and demonstrate your proficiency. If you pass the certification, you can get your name listed on the Certified Users list in the Rich Media Gallery.
Google Web Designer helps you create engaging HTML5 content. Use animations and interactive elements to bring your creative vision to life and enjoy integrations with other Google products, including a shared asset library and one-click-to-publish integration with DoubleClick Studio, compatibility with AdWords, and the ability to collaborate on works-in-progress in Google Drive.
The new Google Web Designer Fundamentals certification allows users to demonstrate proficiency and understanding of the Google Web Designer interface and features. You'll learn:
- The Google Web Designer interface
- How to create templates and animations
- How to build interstitial ads
- How to build advanced expandable ads
- How to create templates and animations
- How to build interstitial ads
- How to build advanced expandable ads
The program consists of a </span>step-by-step eLearning takes you through the basics of Google Web Designer and helps you get trained quickly in building HTML5 ads using the tool. Once you finish the eLearning and build a few test ads, you can take a certification exam to test your knowledge and demonstrate your proficiency. If you pass the certification, you can get your name listed on the Certified Users list in the Rich Media Gallery.
We hope this new certification exam helps you learn the ins and outs of the Google Web Designer tool, so that you can more easily create your HTML5 ads.
Posted by Becky Chappell, Product Marketing Manager, DoubleClick and Google Web Designer
8-1-15 5:17am PST
Google Analytics Blog
How To Setup Enhanced Ecommerce Impressions Using Scroll Tracking
A version of this post originally appeared on Google Analytics Certified Partner InfoTrust's site.
by Nate Denlinger, Web Developer at GACP InfoTrust, LLC
One of our specialities here at InfoTrust is helping ecommerce businesses leverage their web analytics to make better data-driven marketing decisions. This typically starts with installing Google’s Universal Analytics web analytics software and utilizing all of the functionality that is offered with Enhanced Ecommerce tracking capabilities.
One of our specialities here at InfoTrust is helping ecommerce businesses leverage their web analytics to make better data-driven marketing decisions. This typically starts with installing Google’s Universal Analytics web analytics software and utilizing all of the functionality that is offered with Enhanced Ecommerce tracking capabilities.
Enhanced Ecommerce provides you with a complete picture of what customers on your site are seeing, interacting with and purchasing.
One of the ways you track what your customers are seeing is with product impressions (whenever a user sees an image or description of your products on your website).
Normally, you track what products users see or impressions by simply adding an array of product objects to the DataLayer. These represent the products seen on the page, meaning when any page loads with product images/descriptions, data is sent to Google Analytics that a user saw those specific products. This works well.
However, there is a major issue with this method. Sometimes you are sending impressions for products that the user never actually sees. This can happen when your page scrolls vertically and some products are off the page or “below the fold”.
For example, lets take a look at a page on Etsy.com:
 |
| Sample page on Etsy.com (click for full size) |
Here are the results for the search term “Linens”. Currently, you can see sixteen products listed in the search results. However, in the normal method of sending product impressions, a product impression would be sent for every product on the page.
So, in reality this is what we are telling Google Analytics that the user is seeing (every single product on the page):
 |
| Sample page of Etsy.com (click for full-size) |
Obviously, no one's screen looks like this, but by sending all products as an impression, we are effectively saying that our customer saw all 63 products. What happens if the user never scrolls past the 16 products shown in the first screenshot?
We are greatly skewing the impressions for the products on the bottom of the page, because often times, users are not scrolling the entire length of the page (and therefore not seeing the additional products).
This could cause you to make incorrect assumptions about how well a product is selling based off of position.
The solution: Scroll-based impression tracking!
Here is how it works at a high level:
Instead of automatically adding all product impressions to the DataLayer, we add it to another variable just for temporary storage. Meaning, we do not send all the products loaded on a page directly to Google Analytics, but rather just identify the products that loaded on the page.When the page loads, we actually see what products are visible on the page (ones “above the fold” or where the user can actually see them) and add only those products to the DataLayer for product impressions. Now we don’t send any other product impressions unless they are actually visible to the user.Once the user starts to scroll, we start capturing all the products that haven’t been seen before. We continue to capture these products until the user stops scrolling for a certain amount of time.We then batch all of those products together and send them to the DataLayer as product impressions. If the user starts to scroll again, we start checking again. However, we never send the same product twice on the same page. If they scroll to the bottom then back up, we don’t send the first products twice.
Using our example on the “Linen” search results, right away we would send product impressions for the first 16 products. Then, let’s say the user scrolled halfway down the page and stopped. We would then send product impressions for products 18 through 40. The user then scrolls to the bottom of the page so we would send product impressions for 41 through 63. Finally the user scrolls back to the top of the page before clicking on the first product. No more impressions would be sent as impressions for all products have already been sent.
The result: Product impressions are only sent as users actually navigate through the pages and can see the products. This is a much more accurate form of product impression tracking since it reflects actual user navigation.
Next steps: for the technical how-to guide + code samples, please see this post on the InfoTrust site.
8-1-15 5:12am PST
Google Ads Developer Blog
FeedMappings for location targeting available via the AdWords API
What's changing?
Starting on or after July 23, 2015, if you are using v201506 of the AdWords API, then FeedMappingService.get and FeedMappingService.query will return FeedMapping objects created for location targeting. These FeedMapping objects will have criterionType 77, and will not have a value for placeholderType. There will be no change in behavior for v201409 or v201502.
You will start seeing these objects if either of the following is true: You created a Feed linked to your Google My Business account. You created a Location targeting feed through the AdWords user interface, under Shared library -> Business data. Why the change?
Starting with v201506, LocationGroups.feedId is required if your matching function includes a LocationExtensionOperand.
Specifying a feedId in this situation allows AdWords to target the areas surrounding the locations in a location targeting feed. This may be the same feed you are using for location extensions, or a separate feed containing additional locations you want to use strictly for targeting. The key point is that the Feed referenced by LocationGroups.feedId must have a FeedMapping with criterionType 77.
What should you do?
If your application retrieves FeedMapping objects, make sure it will properly handle objects where placeholderType is null and criterionType is set.
If you want to create LocationGroups objects that use a LocationExtensionOperand, you can now use FeedMappingService to find the ID of feeds that have a FeedMapping with criterionType 77.
Learn more
Check out the following resources for more information on Location Groups: The updated placeholders documentation describes the required fields for a location targeting feed. The AddCampaignTargetingCriteria example in the targeting folder of each client library shows how to set up a LocationGroups object using the ID of your location targeting feed. The AdWords Help Center has an overview of using Location Groups. Still have questions? Feel free to visit us on the AdWords API Forum or our Google+ page.
- Josh Radcliff, AdWords API Team
Starting on or after July 23, 2015, if you are using v201506 of the AdWords API, then FeedMappingService.get and FeedMappingService.query will return FeedMapping objects created for location targeting. These FeedMapping objects will have criterionType 77, and will not have a value for placeholderType. There will be no change in behavior for v201409 or v201502.
You will start seeing these objects if either of the following is true: You created a Feed linked to your Google My Business account. You created a Location targeting feed through the AdWords user interface, under Shared library -> Business data. Why the change?
Starting with v201506, LocationGroups.feedId is required if your matching function includes a LocationExtensionOperand.
Specifying a feedId in this situation allows AdWords to target the areas surrounding the locations in a location targeting feed. This may be the same feed you are using for location extensions, or a separate feed containing additional locations you want to use strictly for targeting. The key point is that the Feed referenced by LocationGroups.feedId must have a FeedMapping with criterionType 77.
What should you do?
If your application retrieves FeedMapping objects, make sure it will properly handle objects where placeholderType is null and criterionType is set.
If you want to create LocationGroups objects that use a LocationExtensionOperand, you can now use FeedMappingService to find the ID of feeds that have a FeedMapping with criterionType 77.
Learn more
Check out the following resources for more information on Location Groups: The updated placeholders documentation describes the required fields for a location targeting feed. The AddCampaignTargetingCriteria example in the targeting folder of each client library shows how to set up a LocationGroups object using the ID of your location targeting feed. The AdWords Help Center has an overview of using Location Groups. Still have questions? Feel free to visit us on the AdWords API Forum or our Google+ page.
- Josh Radcliff, AdWords API Team
7-30-15 11;03pm PST
Google Ads Developer Blog
Relaxing constraints on ad group name uniqueness
Have you ever found it frustrating that you can never reuse an AdGroup name after removing the AdGroup, since a removed AdGroup cannot be modified? We have awesome news for you!
Now, AdGroupService doesn’t consider REMOVED AdGroup names when verifying that an AdGroup name is unique within a Campaign. If an AdGroup is in a REMOVED state, then the name of that AdGroup can be reused. This is already the case for Campaigns, and we’ve extended this relaxation of constraints to AdGroups.
If you have questions or need clarification, visit us on the AdWords API Forum or our Google+ page.
Nadine Sundquist, AdWords API Team
Now, AdGroupService doesn’t consider REMOVED AdGroup names when verifying that an AdGroup name is unique within a Campaign. If an AdGroup is in a REMOVED state, then the name of that AdGroup can be reused. This is already the case for Campaigns, and we’ve extended this relaxation of constraints to AdGroups.
If you have questions or need clarification, visit us on the AdWords API Forum or our Google+ page.
Nadine Sundquist, AdWords API Team
7-30-15 7:06pm PST
Google Ads Developer Blog
Help me help you (improve the DFP API)
Believe it or not, the DFP API Team eat, breathe, and live the DFP API. We wake up in the morning thinking, "How can I make the DFP API even better?" Seriously, I have had dreams about the API. It’s weird, but I’m not embarrassed to admit that.
In an effort to delight our developers even more, we’re turning the proverbial mic over to you - our customers - to help us help you. Here’s your chance to let us know how we could be better – better support, better features in the client libraries, better content in workshops, better examples, better haircuts... really, anything. Simply fill out our survey with your thoughts here.
- Nicholas Chen, DFP API Team
In an effort to delight our developers even more, we’re turning the proverbial mic over to you - our customers - to help us help you. Here’s your chance to let us know how we could be better – better support, better features in the client libraries, better content in workshops, better examples, better haircuts... really, anything. Simply fill out our survey with your thoughts here.
- Nicholas Chen, DFP API Team
7-30-15 1:48pm PST
Google Ads Developer Blog
What’s new with IMA iOS SDK Beta 15?
Last week, we released beta version 15 of the IMA SDK for iOS. This release includes two new features:
Ad buffer events via IMAAdsManager delegates Debugging mode Ad buffer events
We’re providing more information on ad buffering by introducing new buffering events via the following optional IMAAdsManagerDelegate methods:
adsManagerAdPlaybackReady: adsManagerAdDidStartBuffering: adsManager:adDidBufferToMediaTime:
Collectively, these delegate methods provide more transparency into buffer events, giving you more control over the user’s ad experience. For more detailed information on these new methods, take a look at the reference documentation.
Debugging mode
We’ve introduced a new debugging mode setting to allow for more verbose logging to the console. You can now set IMASettings.enableDebugMode to YES to enable debug mode. This should not be used in production, as it will show a watermark on the ad player.
A note about CocoaPods
If you’re using CocoaPods with the IMA SDK, please make sure to use at least version 0.38.
As always, if you have any questions, feel free to contact us via the support forum.
- Yury Pavlotsky, IMA SDK Team
Ad buffer events via IMAAdsManager delegates Debugging mode Ad buffer events
We’re providing more information on ad buffering by introducing new buffering events via the following optional IMAAdsManagerDelegate methods:
adsManagerAdPlaybackReady: adsManagerAdDidStartBuffering: adsManager:adDidBufferToMediaTime:
Collectively, these delegate methods provide more transparency into buffer events, giving you more control over the user’s ad experience. For more detailed information on these new methods, take a look at the reference documentation.
Debugging mode
We’ve introduced a new debugging mode setting to allow for more verbose logging to the console. You can now set IMASettings.enableDebugMode to YES to enable debug mode. This should not be used in production, as it will show a watermark on the ad player.
A note about CocoaPods
If you’re using CocoaPods with the IMA SDK, please make sure to use at least version 0.38.
As always, if you have any questions, feel free to contact us via the support forum.
- Yury Pavlotsky, IMA SDK Team
7-29-15 3:42pm PST
AnalyticsL'Oréal Canada finds beauty in programmatic buying
Wednesday, July 29, 2015 | 1:45 PM
Labels: Google Analytics Premium
Cross-posted on the DoubleClick Advertiser Blog
While global sales of L'Oréal Luxe makeup brand Shu Uemura were booming, reaching its target audience across North America proved challenging. By collaborating with Karl Lagerfeld (and his cat, Choupette) and using DoubleClick Bid Manager and Google Analytics Premium, the campaign delivered nearly double the anticipated revenue.
| Goals | |
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| Approach | |
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| Results | |
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To learn more about Shu Uemura’s approach, check out the full case study.
7-28-15 4:00pm
Google's official blog for news, tips and information on AdWords
\Introducing more powerful Dynamic Search Ads, built for your business
by Jen Huang, Senior Product Manager, AdWords
link to Article
http://adwords.blogspot.com/2015/07/introducing-more-powerful-dynamic.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FATHs+%28Inside+AdWords+-+EN%29/
Whether it’s “hotels near me” or “nearby hotels,” people often search for the same things differently. So reaching your customers in the moments that matter can sometimes be a moving target. In fact, of the billions of searches made on Google every day, 15% of them have never been seen before.1 Couple that with shifting product inventory and content hidden deep within your website, people don’t always find what they’re looking for. That’s why three years ago we introduced Dynamic Search Ads (DSA).
Today, we’re excited to announce that DSA has been enhanced and retooled from the ground up, and is now available to all advertisers globally.
What’s Dynamic Search Ads?
DSA helps you reach your customers with the right information, in the moments they’re searching -- without the need to manage keywords. Using Google’s organic web crawling technology, DSA indexes your website to determine which searches to show ads for. If a search is relevant to the content on your website, Google will automatically create an ad to enter into the auction. Your ads’ headlines and landing pages are generated based on the products and services you offer, and what people are searching for. These highly targeted ads also complement other AdWords campaigns by delivering value for relevant searches that aren’t covered by existing keywords.
Show ads based on your website
Now, there’s an even more powerful way for you to reach your customers. In addition to crawling and indexing your website, DSA now organizes your website content into recommended categories for targeting your ads. Recommended categories are customized to your products and services, for example “furniture,” and only trigger ads for search queries where you have a relevant landing page. Each category can also be refined to show additional, more specific categories.
For example, you might drill into the recommended category for “furniture” to advertise just your “dining room furniture” or “living room furniture.” Select as many or as few categories as you want, or select the option to show ads based on your entire website.
Ad previews and insightful recommendations
Once you’ve selected your categories, we’ve added new tools to provide more transparency into how your ads will show. For each recommended category, you’ll now see samples of the search queries you’ll be targeting, the text ads that’ll appear, and the pages your customers will land on. To help get your campaign started, a recommended bid is also calculated for each category. These recommendations are based on the performance of your existing keywords that are targeting similar search queries.
Many customers have seen early success with these enhancements to Dynamic Search Ads.
As a global player, trivago constantly faced the challenge of covering their huge hotel inventory throughout all markets. DSA and the new categories allowed them to do just that, even in markets with limited resources. Leveraging the scalability of DSA, trivago was able to roll out DSA to over 25 markets in a short period of time.
Hayneedle.com, one of the nation’s largest online retailers, helped beta test DSA. They used their new recommended categories to deliver a 5% incremental lift in qualified search traffic to their website.
Immense reach with incredible ease
DSA is now more powerful than ever -- and it takes less than 10 minutes to set up your first campaign. An improved workflow guides you through campaign creation, which includes a more intuitive way to ensure your ad templates remain relevant to your dynamic ad targets.
You can learn more about Dynamic Search Ads in the AdWords Help Center.
Posted by Jen Huang, Senior Product Manager, AdWords
1 Internal Google data.
Today, we’re excited to announce that DSA has been enhanced and retooled from the ground up, and is now available to all advertisers globally.
DSA helps you reach your customers with the right information, in the moments they’re searching -- without the need to manage keywords. Using Google’s organic web crawling technology, DSA indexes your website to determine which searches to show ads for. If a search is relevant to the content on your website, Google will automatically create an ad to enter into the auction. Your ads’ headlines and landing pages are generated based on the products and services you offer, and what people are searching for. These highly targeted ads also complement other AdWords campaigns by delivering value for relevant searches that aren’t covered by existing keywords.
Show ads based on your website
Now, there’s an even more powerful way for you to reach your customers. In addition to crawling and indexing your website, DSA now organizes your website content into recommended categories for targeting your ads. Recommended categories are customized to your products and services, for example “furniture,” and only trigger ads for search queries where you have a relevant landing page. Each category can also be refined to show additional, more specific categories.
 |
| Recommended categories for DSA |
Ad previews and insightful recommendations
Once you’ve selected your categories, we’ve added new tools to provide more transparency into how your ads will show. For each recommended category, you’ll now see samples of the search queries you’ll be targeting, the text ads that’ll appear, and the pages your customers will land on. To help get your campaign started, a recommended bid is also calculated for each category. These recommendations are based on the performance of your existing keywords that are targeting similar search queries.
Hayneedle.com, one of the nation’s largest online retailers, helped beta test DSA. They used their new recommended categories to deliver a 5% incremental lift in qualified search traffic to their website.
Immense reach with incredible ease
DSA is now more powerful than ever -- and it takes less than 10 minutes to set up your first campaign. An improved workflow guides you through campaign creation, which includes a more intuitive way to ensure your ad templates remain relevant to your dynamic ad targets.
You can learn more about Dynamic Search Ads in the AdWords Help Center.
Posted by Jen Huang, Senior Product Manager, AdWords
1 Internal Google data.
7-28-15 12:52pm PST
Inside AdWords
Google's official blog for news, tips and information on AdWords
Easily update and validate ads with new enhancements to Merchant Center data feeds
By Sven Herschel, Product Manager for Google Merchant Center
Link to Article
http://adwords.blogspot.com/2015/07/easily-update-and-validate-ads-with-new.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FATHs+%28Inside+AdWords+-+EN%29
Posted: Tuesday, July 28, 2015
Your data feed is key to promoting your products on Google.com — it lets you capture the attention of shoppers by letting them know you’ve got exactly what they’re looking for. To help you seamlessly update ads and quickly get products in front of new customers, today we’re excited to announce two data feed enhancements to Google Merchant Center — one that improves efficiencies for large retailers, and one that helps small retailers get on board more easily:
Online product inventory feeds help you quickly update key attributes
If the price, availability, or sale price information for some or all of your products changes frequently, online product inventory feeds is a new feed type to make quick updates to these product attributes, without having to re-submit the full product feed:
Validate and upload your feed directly from Google Sheets
Google Sheets was designed to provide a fast and friendly way to get started with shopping ads for small and medium sized retailers. If you use Google Sheets to upload your inventory to Google Merchant Center, the newGoogle Sheets add-on simplifies how you create, upload and validate feeds:
For more information on how to get started with Google Sheet add-on, visit our Help Center article.
Be sure to check out these two new enhancements today to get up and running on Google Shopping and make the world your storefront.
Posted by Sven Herschel, Product Manager for Google Merchant Center
- Online product inventory feeds: a new feed type that lets you quickly update price, availability and sale price of your key products. This is especially useful for larger retailers that need to change these attributes frequently.
- Google Sheets add-on: a Sheets extension that connects your spreadsheet directly to Merchant Center for a faster and easier upload. This is especially useful to for smaller retailers looking to get up and running quickly with shopping ads.
Online product inventory feeds help you quickly update key attributes
If the price, availability, or sale price information for some or all of your products changes frequently, online product inventory feeds is a new feed type to make quick updates to these product attributes, without having to re-submit the full product feed:
- Save time with even faster feed processing: Submit new information for price and availability throughout the day to update these specific attributes. You can submit updates for just a small subset of your products for faster processing. If there’s an error processing your online inventory feed, your full product feed will not be impacted.
- Show shoppers the most accurate product details: When your pricing or availability suddenly changes, update your affected items on the fly, allowing fresher information to appear on Google Shopping.
Validate and upload your feed directly from Google Sheets
Google Sheets was designed to provide a fast and friendly way to get started with shopping ads for small and medium sized retailers. If you use Google Sheets to upload your inventory to Google Merchant Center, the newGoogle Sheets add-on simplifies how you create, upload and validate feeds:
- Validate your products directly from Sheets: The sidebar in the add-on allows you to validate individual rows or your entire Google Sheet, showing you any errors and warnings before you upload your data feed.
- Upload your products directly from Sheets: From the sidebar, you can upload your entire spreadsheet into Merchant Center, without leaving Sheets. The results of your upload are displayed directly in the sidebar, giving you immediate feedback on feed processing.
Be sure to check out these two new enhancements today to get up and running on Google Shopping and make the world your storefront.
Posted by Sven Herschel, Product Manager for Google Merchant Center
Insights from Googlers into our products, technology, and the Google culture
Through the Google lens: Search trends July 10-16
link to Article
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2015/07/through-google-lens-search-trends-july_17.html
It’s Friday, which means it’s time for a good, old-fashioned Search trends round up. Read on to see what the world wanted to know this week.
To Pluto and Beyond
It may have lost its planetary title, but Pluto officially became the most distant solid object to be visited by spacecraft as NASA’s New Horizons successfully completed its “flyby” this week. The mission to explore the dwarf giant took a mere nine years and 3 billion miles of space travel and has already returned some truly incredible high-resolution images of Pluto and its moons, including the most epic vacation Instagram of all time.Searches for news about the mission topped 5 million, plus another 100,000+ searches for photos.
Oh baby
In other historic and out of this world news, Louis Tomlinson is the first member of One Direction to announce he’s going to be a dad. While this was likely upsetting news for many 1D fans, it didn’t stop the searches--Louis racked up more than 500,000 of them this week. And, we’ve all got Jimmy Fallon to thank for this week’s most disgusting search trend, a truly horrifying finger injury called ring avulsion. Fallon, who was sporting a bandaged hand from behind "The Tonight Show" desk, explained that he had surgery following a freak accident involving a kitchen counter and his wedding ring. Searchers took to Google to find out more and with search interest in images of ring avulsion up 50x over the last week, we’re willing to bet at least a few of them probably wish they hadn’t.
Awards season...again
Nominations for the 2015 Emmy Awards were announced this week, inspiring more than 200,000 searches. Gone but definitely not forgotten "Parks and Recreation" was the most searched Emmy nominee for a comedy series, though Amy Schumer (whose new movie "Trainwreck" opens today) edged out Amy Poehler as the most searched lead actress in a comedy. In a potential preview of the 2016 Emmy Awards, Rachel McAdams, who co-stars in the new season of HBO’s "True Detective," was searched more than 50,000 times this week.
It was a good week all around, and to play us out, we recommend Wilco’s new album, Star Wars. The surprise, free-to-download release this week resulted in more than 50,000 searches--and a lot of excited Tweedy fans.
To Pluto and Beyond
It may have lost its planetary title, but Pluto officially became the most distant solid object to be visited by spacecraft as NASA’s New Horizons successfully completed its “flyby” this week. The mission to explore the dwarf giant took a mere nine years and 3 billion miles of space travel and has already returned some truly incredible high-resolution images of Pluto and its moons, including the most epic vacation Instagram of all time.Searches for news about the mission topped 5 million, plus another 100,000+ searches for photos.
Oh baby
In other historic and out of this world news, Louis Tomlinson is the first member of One Direction to announce he’s going to be a dad. While this was likely upsetting news for many 1D fans, it didn’t stop the searches--Louis racked up more than 500,000 of them this week. And, we’ve all got Jimmy Fallon to thank for this week’s most disgusting search trend, a truly horrifying finger injury called ring avulsion. Fallon, who was sporting a bandaged hand from behind "The Tonight Show" desk, explained that he had surgery following a freak accident involving a kitchen counter and his wedding ring. Searchers took to Google to find out more and with search interest in images of ring avulsion up 50x over the last week, we’re willing to bet at least a few of them probably wish they hadn’t.
Awards season...again
Nominations for the 2015 Emmy Awards were announced this week, inspiring more than 200,000 searches. Gone but definitely not forgotten "Parks and Recreation" was the most searched Emmy nominee for a comedy series, though Amy Schumer (whose new movie "Trainwreck" opens today) edged out Amy Poehler as the most searched lead actress in a comedy. In a potential preview of the 2016 Emmy Awards, Rachel McAdams, who co-stars in the new season of HBO’s "True Detective," was searched more than 50,000 times this week.
It was a good week all around, and to play us out, we recommend Wilco’s new album, Star Wars. The surprise, free-to-download release this week resulted in more than 50,000 searches--and a lot of excited Tweedy fans.
Insights from Googlers into our products, technology, and the Google culture
Through the Google lens: Search trends July 10-16
link to Article
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2015/07/through-google-lens-search-trends-july_17.html
It’s Friday, which means it’s time for a good, old-fashioned Search trends round up. Read on to see what the world wanted to know this week.
To Pluto and Beyond
It may have lost its planetary title, but Pluto officially became the most distant solid object to be visited by spacecraft as NASA’s New Horizons successfully completed its “flyby” this week. The mission to explore the dwarf giant took a mere nine years and 3 billion miles of space travel and has already returned some truly incredible high-resolution images of Pluto and its moons, including the most epic vacation Instagram of all time.Searches for news about the mission topped 5 million, plus another 100,000+ searches for photos.
Oh baby
In other historic and out of this world news, Louis Tomlinson is the first member of One Direction to announce he’s going to be a dad. While this was likely upsetting news for many 1D fans, it didn’t stop the searches--Louis racked up more than 500,000 of them this week. And, we’ve all got Jimmy Fallon to thank for this week’s most disgusting search trend, a truly horrifying finger injury called ring avulsion. Fallon, who was sporting a bandaged hand from behind "The Tonight Show" desk, explained that he had surgery following a freak accident involving a kitchen counter and his wedding ring. Searchers took to Google to find out more and with search interest in images of ring avulsion up 50x over the last week, we’re willing to bet at least a few of them probably wish they hadn’t.
Awards season...again
Nominations for the 2015 Emmy Awards were announced this week, inspiring more than 200,000 searches. Gone but definitely not forgotten "Parks and Recreation" was the most searched Emmy nominee for a comedy series, though Amy Schumer (whose new movie "Trainwreck" opens today) edged out Amy Poehler as the most searched lead actress in a comedy. In a potential preview of the 2016 Emmy Awards, Rachel McAdams, who co-stars in the new season of HBO’s "True Detective," was searched more than 50,000 times this week.
It was a good week all around, and to play us out, we recommend Wilco’s new album, Star Wars. The surprise, free-to-download release this week resulted in more than 50,000 searches--and a lot of excited Tweedy fans.
To Pluto and Beyond
It may have lost its planetary title, but Pluto officially became the most distant solid object to be visited by spacecraft as NASA’s New Horizons successfully completed its “flyby” this week. The mission to explore the dwarf giant took a mere nine years and 3 billion miles of space travel and has already returned some truly incredible high-resolution images of Pluto and its moons, including the most epic vacation Instagram of all time.Searches for news about the mission topped 5 million, plus another 100,000+ searches for photos.
Oh baby
In other historic and out of this world news, Louis Tomlinson is the first member of One Direction to announce he’s going to be a dad. While this was likely upsetting news for many 1D fans, it didn’t stop the searches--Louis racked up more than 500,000 of them this week. And, we’ve all got Jimmy Fallon to thank for this week’s most disgusting search trend, a truly horrifying finger injury called ring avulsion. Fallon, who was sporting a bandaged hand from behind "The Tonight Show" desk, explained that he had surgery following a freak accident involving a kitchen counter and his wedding ring. Searchers took to Google to find out more and with search interest in images of ring avulsion up 50x over the last week, we’re willing to bet at least a few of them probably wish they hadn’t.
Awards season...again
Nominations for the 2015 Emmy Awards were announced this week, inspiring more than 200,000 searches. Gone but definitely not forgotten "Parks and Recreation" was the most searched Emmy nominee for a comedy series, though Amy Schumer (whose new movie "Trainwreck" opens today) edged out Amy Poehler as the most searched lead actress in a comedy. In a potential preview of the 2016 Emmy Awards, Rachel McAdams, who co-stars in the new season of HBO’s "True Detective," was searched more than 50,000 times this week.
It was a good week all around, and to play us out, we recommend Wilco’s new album, Star Wars. The surprise, free-to-download release this week resulted in more than 50,000 searches--and a lot of excited Tweedy fans.
7-25-15 5:20pm PST
I have bought over 15 Domains in past two years so of course this Article caught my attention,
let me know what you think if you buy a good amount of Domain names and this affects you.
Brian M Rye-Blog Autor
Article from Google Webmaster Central Blog
link to Article
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/07/googles-handling-of-new-top-level.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FamDG+%28Official+Google+Webmaster+Central+Blog%29
Google's handling of new top level domains
Posted: Tuesday, July 21, 2015
With the coming of many new generic top level domains (gTLDs), we'd like to give some insight into how these are handled in Google's search. We’ve heard and seen questions and misconceptions about the way we treat new top level domains (TLDs), like .guru, .how, or any of the .BRAND gTLDs, for example:
Q: How will new gTLDs affect search? Is Google changing the search algorithm to favor these TLDs? How important are they really in search?
A: Overall, our systems treat new gTLDs like other gTLDs (like .com & .org). Keywords in a TLD do not give any advantage or disadvantage in search.
Q: What about IDN TLDs such as .みんな? Can Googlebot crawl and index them, so that they can be used in search?
A: Yes. These TLDs can be used the same as other TLDs (it's easy to check with a query like [site:みんな]). Google treats the Punycode version of a hostname as being equivalent to the unencoded version, so you don't need to redirect or canonicalize them separately. For the rest of the URL, remember to use UTF-8 for the path & query-string in the URL, when using non-ASCII characters.
Q: Will a .BRAND TLD be given any more or less weight than a .com?
A: No. Those TLDs will be treated the same as a other gTLDs. They will require the same geotargeting settings and configuration, and they won’t have more weight or influence in the way we crawl, index, or rank URLs.
Q: How are the new region or city TLDs (like .london or .bayern) handled?
A: Even if they look region-specific, we will treat them as gTLDs. This is consistent with our handling of regional TLDs like .eu and .asia. There may be exceptions at some point down the line, as we see how they're used in practice. See our help center for more information on multi-regional and multilingual sites, and set geotargeting in Search Console where relevant.
Q: What about real ccTLDs (country code top-level domains) : will Google favor ccTLDs (like .uk, .ae, etc.) as a local domain for people searching in those countries?
A: By default, most ccTLDs (with exceptions) result in Google using these to geotarget the website; it tells us that the website is probably more relevant in the appropriate country. Again, see our help center for more information on multi-regional and multilingual sites.
Q: Will Google support my SEO efforts to move my domain from .com to a new TLD? How do I move my website without losing any search ranking or history?
A: We have extensive site move documentation in our Help Center. We treat these moves the same as any other site move. That said, domain changes can take time to be processed for search (and outside of search, users expect email addresses to remain valid over a longer period of time), so it's generally best to choose a domain that will fit your long-term needs.
We hope this gives you more information on how the new top level domains are handled. If you have any more questions, feel free to drop them here, or ask in our help forums.
Q: How will new gTLDs affect search? Is Google changing the search algorithm to favor these TLDs? How important are they really in search?
A: Overall, our systems treat new gTLDs like other gTLDs (like .com & .org). Keywords in a TLD do not give any advantage or disadvantage in search.
Q: What about IDN TLDs such as .みんな? Can Googlebot crawl and index them, so that they can be used in search?
A: Yes. These TLDs can be used the same as other TLDs (it's easy to check with a query like [site:みんな]). Google treats the Punycode version of a hostname as being equivalent to the unencoded version, so you don't need to redirect or canonicalize them separately. For the rest of the URL, remember to use UTF-8 for the path & query-string in the URL, when using non-ASCII characters.
Q: Will a .BRAND TLD be given any more or less weight than a .com?
A: No. Those TLDs will be treated the same as a other gTLDs. They will require the same geotargeting settings and configuration, and they won’t have more weight or influence in the way we crawl, index, or rank URLs.
Q: How are the new region or city TLDs (like .london or .bayern) handled?
A: Even if they look region-specific, we will treat them as gTLDs. This is consistent with our handling of regional TLDs like .eu and .asia. There may be exceptions at some point down the line, as we see how they're used in practice. See our help center for more information on multi-regional and multilingual sites, and set geotargeting in Search Console where relevant.
Q: What about real ccTLDs (country code top-level domains) : will Google favor ccTLDs (like .uk, .ae, etc.) as a local domain for people searching in those countries?
A: By default, most ccTLDs (with exceptions) result in Google using these to geotarget the website; it tells us that the website is probably more relevant in the appropriate country. Again, see our help center for more information on multi-regional and multilingual sites.
Q: Will Google support my SEO efforts to move my domain from .com to a new TLD? How do I move my website without losing any search ranking or history?
A: We have extensive site move documentation in our Help Center. We treat these moves the same as any other site move. That said, domain changes can take time to be processed for search (and outside of search, users expect email addresses to remain valid over a longer period of time), so it's generally best to choose a domain that will fit your long-term needs.
We hope this gives you more information on how the new top level domains are handled. If you have any more questions, feel free to drop them here, or ask in our help forums.
7-25-15 5:20pm PST
I have bought over 15 Domains in past two years so of course this Article caught my attention,
let me know what you think if you buy a good amount of Domain names and this affects you.
Brian M Rye-Blog Autor
Article from Google Webmaster Central Blog
link to Article
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/07/googles-handling-of-new-top-level.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FamDG+%28Official+Google+Webmaster+Central+Blog%29
Google's handling of new top level domains
Posted: Tuesday, July 21, 2015
With the coming of many new generic top level domains (gTLDs), we'd like to give some insight into how these are handled in Google's search. We’ve heard and seen questions and misconceptions about the way we treat new top level domains (TLDs), like .guru, .how, or any of the .BRAND gTLDs, for example:
Q: How will new gTLDs affect search? Is Google changing the search algorithm to favor these TLDs? How important are they really in search?
A: Overall, our systems treat new gTLDs like other gTLDs (like .com & .org). Keywords in a TLD do not give any advantage or disadvantage in search.
Q: What about IDN TLDs such as .みんな? Can Googlebot crawl and index them, so that they can be used in search?
A: Yes. These TLDs can be used the same as other TLDs (it's easy to check with a query like [site:みんな]). Google treats the Punycode version of a hostname as being equivalent to the unencoded version, so you don't need to redirect or canonicalize them separately. For the rest of the URL, remember to use UTF-8 for the path & query-string in the URL, when using non-ASCII characters.
Q: Will a .BRAND TLD be given any more or less weight than a .com?
A: No. Those TLDs will be treated the same as a other gTLDs. They will require the same geotargeting settings and configuration, and they won’t have more weight or influence in the way we crawl, index, or rank URLs.
Q: How are the new region or city TLDs (like .london or .bayern) handled?
A: Even if they look region-specific, we will treat them as gTLDs. This is consistent with our handling of regional TLDs like .eu and .asia. There may be exceptions at some point down the line, as we see how they're used in practice. See our help center for more information on multi-regional and multilingual sites, and set geotargeting in Search Console where relevant.
Q: What about real ccTLDs (country code top-level domains) : will Google favor ccTLDs (like .uk, .ae, etc.) as a local domain for people searching in those countries?
A: By default, most ccTLDs (with exceptions) result in Google using these to geotarget the website; it tells us that the website is probably more relevant in the appropriate country. Again, see our help center for more information on multi-regional and multilingual sites.
Q: Will Google support my SEO efforts to move my domain from .com to a new TLD? How do I move my website without losing any search ranking or history?
A: We have extensive site move documentation in our Help Center. We treat these moves the same as any other site move. That said, domain changes can take time to be processed for search (and outside of search, users expect email addresses to remain valid over a longer period of time), so it's generally best to choose a domain that will fit your long-term needs.
We hope this gives you more information on how the new top level domains are handled. If you have any more questions, feel free to drop them here, or ask in our help forums.
Q: How will new gTLDs affect search? Is Google changing the search algorithm to favor these TLDs? How important are they really in search?
A: Overall, our systems treat new gTLDs like other gTLDs (like .com & .org). Keywords in a TLD do not give any advantage or disadvantage in search.
Q: What about IDN TLDs such as .みんな? Can Googlebot crawl and index them, so that they can be used in search?
A: Yes. These TLDs can be used the same as other TLDs (it's easy to check with a query like [site:みんな]). Google treats the Punycode version of a hostname as being equivalent to the unencoded version, so you don't need to redirect or canonicalize them separately. For the rest of the URL, remember to use UTF-8 for the path & query-string in the URL, when using non-ASCII characters.
Q: Will a .BRAND TLD be given any more or less weight than a .com?
A: No. Those TLDs will be treated the same as a other gTLDs. They will require the same geotargeting settings and configuration, and they won’t have more weight or influence in the way we crawl, index, or rank URLs.
Q: How are the new region or city TLDs (like .london or .bayern) handled?
A: Even if they look region-specific, we will treat them as gTLDs. This is consistent with our handling of regional TLDs like .eu and .asia. There may be exceptions at some point down the line, as we see how they're used in practice. See our help center for more information on multi-regional and multilingual sites, and set geotargeting in Search Console where relevant.
Q: What about real ccTLDs (country code top-level domains) : will Google favor ccTLDs (like .uk, .ae, etc.) as a local domain for people searching in those countries?
A: By default, most ccTLDs (with exceptions) result in Google using these to geotarget the website; it tells us that the website is probably more relevant in the appropriate country. Again, see our help center for more information on multi-regional and multilingual sites.
Q: Will Google support my SEO efforts to move my domain from .com to a new TLD? How do I move my website without losing any search ranking or history?
A: We have extensive site move documentation in our Help Center. We treat these moves the same as any other site move. That said, domain changes can take time to be processed for search (and outside of search, users expect email addresses to remain valid over a longer period of time), so it's generally best to choose a domain that will fit your long-term needs.
We hope this gives you more information on how the new top level domains are handled. If you have any more questions, feel free to drop them here, or ask in our help forums.
Google wants to make it easier for people to shop while using its website and is trying out a new feature allowing smartphone users to make online purchases from their search results.
The introduction of 'Purchases on Google' comes with Facebook, and Pinterest also trying to make it easier for people to shop while using their sites, and profit from transactions or related advertising.
"Although we're still in early experiments with a limited number of retailers, we see 'Purchases on Google' as a big step towards helping retailers drive more mobile conversions and win more customers," Google shopping product management vice president Jonathan Alferness said in a blog post.
According to Alferness, mobile devices, typically smartphones were increasingly consulted before or during shopping trips in the US, influencing nearly a trillion dollars in in-store sales last year.
When people made shopping-related searches using Google, results might include ads fe aturing 'Buy on Google' buttons that could be clicked to jump to pages where they could check-out using payment credentials stored in Google accounts.
"Purchases on Google will simplify our customers' ability to search for items on Google and then buy with Staples," Staples executive vice president of global e-commerce Faisal Masud said in the blog post.
If Google were to prove a convenient one-stop shop on mobile devices, it could pull customers away from Amazon, the giant of e-commerce.
Staples and Under Armour were among the companies that had embraced the feature, which debuted yesterday.
If shoppers tapped on items promoted with Google's ''Buy'' button, they could transfer to a product page hosted by Google and pay with information already saved to their account.
In the past, shoppers would be directed from search result listings to retailer websites, forced to navigate new, and not necessarily user-friendly, shopping interfaces.
The feature was among a number of upgrades revealed in a blog post on the search company's AdWords blog, which helped companies place ads on Google's search result pages. All features targeted mobile devices, and included ads that got bigger when swiped.
''Fewer people wait to head to the mall on Saturday to go shopping,'' Alferness. ''Shopping now happens anytime and anywhere.''
7-22-2015 3pm
New guide for setting up AdWords API authorization using the OAuth 2.0 Playground by JoshRadcliffe, AdWords API Team
Article from Google Ads Developer Blog
link to artice http://googleadsdeveloper.blogspot.com/
New guide for setting up AdWords API authorization using the OAuth 2.0 Playground Posted: Wednesday, July 22, 2015 For those of you who’d prefer to generate an OAuth refresh token using only a browser, there's a new guide on how to use the OAuth 2.0 Playground: https://developers.google.com/adwords/api/docs/guides/oauth_playground The guide walks you through the authorization setup required by the AdWords API for a Web application--via a browser session--without the need to execute any command-line scripts. More OAuth resources OAuth 2.0 Authentication for the AdWords API Using OAuth 2.0 to Access Google APIs Still have questions? Feel free to visit us on the AdWords API Forum or our Google+ page. - Josh Radcliff, AdWords API Team Labels: adwords_api, oauth FeedMappings for location targeting available via the AdWords API Posted: Wednesday, July 15, 2015 What's changing? Starting on or after July 23, 2015, if you are using v201506 of the AdWords API, then FeedMappingService.get and FeedMappingService.query will return FeedMapping objects created for location targeting. These FeedMapping objects will have criterionType 77, and will not have a value for placeholderType. There will be no change in behavior for v201409 or v201502. You will start seeing these objects if either of the following is true: You created a Feed linked to your Google My Business account. You created a Location targeting feed through the AdWords user interface, under Shared library -> Business data. Why the change? Starting with v201506, LocationGroups.feedId is required if your matching function includes a LocationExtensionOperand. Specifying a feedId in this situation allows AdWords to target the areas surrounding the locations in a location targeting feed. This may be the same feed you are using for location extensions, or a separate feed containing additional locations you want to use strictly for targeting. The key point is that the Feed referenced by LocationGroups.feedId must have a FeedMapping with criterionType 77. What should you do? If your application retrieves FeedMapping objects, make sure it will properly handle objects where placeholderType is null and criterionType is set. If you want to create LocationGroups objects that use a LocationExtensionOperand, you can now use FeedMappingService to find the ID of feeds that have a FeedMapping with criterionType 77. Learn more Check out the following resources for more information on Location Groups: The updated placeholders documentation describes the required fields for a location targeting feed. The AddCampaignTargetingCriteria example in the targeting folder of each client library shows how to set up a LocationGroups object using the ID of your location targeting feed. The AdWords Help Center has an overview of using Location Groups. Still have questions? Feel free to visit us on the AdWords API Forum or our Google+ page. - Josh Radcliff, AdWords API Team Labels: adwords_api, LocationExtensionOperand, LocationGroups
7-29-15 3:42pm PST
L'Oréal Canada finds beauty in programmatic buying
Wednesday, July 29, 2015 | 1:45 PM
Labels: Google Analytics Premium
Cross-posted on the DoubleClick Advertiser Blog
While global sales of L'Oréal Luxe makeup brand Shu Uemura were booming, reaching its target audience across North America proved challenging. By collaborating with Karl Lagerfeld (and his cat, Choupette) and using DoubleClick Bid Manager and Google Analytics Premium, the campaign delivered nearly double the anticipated revenue.
| Goals | |
| |
| Approach | |
| |
| Results | |
|
To learn more about Shu Uemura’s approach, check out the full case study.
7-29-15 3:42pm PST
L'Oréal Canada finds beauty in programmatic buying
Wednesday, July 29, 2015 | 1:45 PM
Labels: Google Analytics Premium
Cross-posted on the DoubleClick Advertiser Blog
While global sales of L'Oréal Luxe makeup brand Shu Uemura were booming, reaching its target audience across North America proved challenging. By collaborating with Karl Lagerfeld (and his cat, Choupette) and using DoubleClick Bid Manager and Google Analytics Premium, the campaign delivered nearly double the anticipated revenue.
| Goals | |
| |
| Approach | |
| |
| Results | |
|
To learn more about Shu Uemura’s approach, check out the full case study.
7-29-15 3:42pm PST
L'Oréal Canada finds beauty in programmatic buying
Wednesday, July 29, 2015 | 1:45 PM
Labels: Google Analytics Premium
Cross-posted on the DoubleClick Advertiser Blog
While global sales of L'Oréal Luxe makeup brand Shu Uemura were booming, reaching its target audience across North America proved challenging. By collaborating with Karl Lagerfeld (and his cat, Choupette) and using DoubleClick Bid Manager and Google Analytics Premium, the campaign delivered nearly double the anticipated revenue.
| Goals | |
| |
| Approach | |
| |
| Results | |
|
To learn more about Shu Uemura’s approach, check out the full case study.
7-29-15 3:42pm PST
L'Oréal Canada finds beauty in programmatic buying
Wednesday, July 29, 2015 | 1:45 PM
Labels: Google Analytics Premium
Cross-posted on the DoubleClick Advertiser Blog
While global sales of L'Oréal Luxe makeup brand Shu Uemura were booming, reaching its target audience across North America proved challenging. By collaborating with Karl Lagerfeld (and his cat, Choupette) and using DoubleClick Bid Manager and Google Analytics Premium, the campaign delivered nearly double the anticipated revenue.
| Goals | |
| |
| Approach | |
| |
| Results | |
|
To learn more about Shu Uemura’s approach, check out the full case study.
7-29-15 3:42pm PST
L'Oréal Canada finds beauty in programmatic buying
Wednesday, July 29, 2015 | 1:45 PM
Labels: Google Analytics Premium
Cross-posted on the DoubleClick Advertiser Blog
While global sales of L'Oréal Luxe makeup brand Shu Uemura were booming, reaching its target audience across North America proved challenging. By collaborating with Karl Lagerfeld (and his cat, Choupette) and using DoubleClick Bid Manager and Google Analytics Premium, the campaign delivered nearly double the anticipated revenue.
| Goals | |
| |
| Approach | |
| |
| Results | |
|
To learn more about Shu Uemura’s approach, check out the full case study.
I have bought over 15 Domains in past two years so of course this Article caught my attention,
let me know what you think if you buy a good amount of Domain names and this affects you.
Brian M Rye-Blog Autor
Article from Google Webmaster Central Blog
link to Article
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/07/googles-handling-of-new-top-level.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FamDG+%28Official+Google+Webmaster+Central+Blog%29
Google's handling of new top level domains
Posted: Tuesday, July 21, 2015
With the coming of many new generic top level domains (gTLDs), we'd like to give some insight into how these are handled in Google's search. We’ve heard and seen questions and misconceptions about the way we treat new top level domains (TLDs), like .guru, .how, or any of the .BRAND gTLDs, for example:
Q: How will new gTLDs affect search? Is Google changing the search algorithm to favor these TLDs? How important are they really in search?
A: Overall, our systems treat new gTLDs like other gTLDs (like .com & .org). Keywords in a TLD do not give any advantage or disadvantage in search.
Q: What about IDN TLDs such as .みんな? Can Googlebot crawl and index them, so that they can be used in search?
A: Yes. These TLDs can be used the same as other TLDs (it's easy to check with a query like [site:みんな]). Google treats the Punycode version of a hostname as being equivalent to the unencoded version, so you don't need to redirect or canonicalize them separately. For the rest of the URL, remember to use UTF-8 for the path & query-string in the URL, when using non-ASCII characters.
Q: Will a .BRAND TLD be given any more or less weight than a .com?
A: No. Those TLDs will be treated the same as a other gTLDs. They will require the same geotargeting settings and configuration, and they won’t have more weight or influence in the way we crawl, index, or rank URLs.
Q: How are the new region or city TLDs (like .london or .bayern) handled?
A: Even if they look region-specific, we will treat them as gTLDs. This is consistent with our handling of regional TLDs like .eu and .asia. There may be exceptions at some point down the line, as we see how they're used in practice. See our help center for more information on multi-regional and multilingual sites, and set geotargeting in Search Console where relevant.
Q: What about real ccTLDs (country code top-level domains) : will Google favor ccTLDs (like .uk, .ae, etc.) as a local domain for people searching in those countries?
A: By default, most ccTLDs (with exceptions) result in Google using these to geotarget the website; it tells us that the website is probably more relevant in the appropriate country. Again, see our help center for more information on multi-regional and multilingual sites.
Q: Will Google support my SEO efforts to move my domain from .com to a new TLD? How do I move my website without losing any search ranking or history?
A: We have extensive site move documentation in our Help Center. We treat these moves the same as any other site move. That said, domain changes can take time to be processed for search (and outside of search, users expect email addresses to remain valid over a longer period of time), so it's generally best to choose a domain that will fit your long-term needs.
We hope this gives you more information on how the new top level domains are handled. If you have any more questions, feel free to drop them here, or ask in our help forums.
Q: How will new gTLDs affect search? Is Google changing the search algorithm to favor these TLDs? How important are they really in search?
A: Overall, our systems treat new gTLDs like other gTLDs (like .com & .org). Keywords in a TLD do not give any advantage or disadvantage in search.
Q: What about IDN TLDs such as .みんな? Can Googlebot crawl and index them, so that they can be used in search?
A: Yes. These TLDs can be used the same as other TLDs (it's easy to check with a query like [site:みんな]). Google treats the Punycode version of a hostname as being equivalent to the unencoded version, so you don't need to redirect or canonicalize them separately. For the rest of the URL, remember to use UTF-8 for the path & query-string in the URL, when using non-ASCII characters.
Q: Will a .BRAND TLD be given any more or less weight than a .com?
A: No. Those TLDs will be treated the same as a other gTLDs. They will require the same geotargeting settings and configuration, and they won’t have more weight or influence in the way we crawl, index, or rank URLs.
Q: How are the new region or city TLDs (like .london or .bayern) handled?
A: Even if they look region-specific, we will treat them as gTLDs. This is consistent with our handling of regional TLDs like .eu and .asia. There may be exceptions at some point down the line, as we see how they're used in practice. See our help center for more information on multi-regional and multilingual sites, and set geotargeting in Search Console where relevant.
Q: What about real ccTLDs (country code top-level domains) : will Google favor ccTLDs (like .uk, .ae, etc.) as a local domain for people searching in those countries?
A: By default, most ccTLDs (with exceptions) result in Google using these to geotarget the website; it tells us that the website is probably more relevant in the appropriate country. Again, see our help center for more information on multi-regional and multilingual sites.
Q: Will Google support my SEO efforts to move my domain from .com to a new TLD? How do I move my website without losing any search ranking or history?
A: We have extensive site move documentation in our Help Center. We treat these moves the same as any other site move. That said, domain changes can take time to be processed for search (and outside of search, users expect email addresses to remain valid over a longer period of time), so it's generally best to choose a domain that will fit your long-term needs.
We hope this gives you more information on how the new top level domains are handled. If you have any more questions, feel free to drop them here, or ask in our help forums.
Google+: A case study on App Download Interstitials
Posted on
Google Webmaster Blog,
link to article
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/07/google-case-study-on-app-download-interstitials.html
Google+: A case study on App Download Interstitials
By David Morell, Software Engineer, Google+
Posted: Thursday, July 23, 2015
Many mobile sites use promotional app interstitials to encourage users to download their native mobile apps. For some apps, native can provide richer user experiences, and use features of the device that are currently not easy to access on a browser. Because of this, many app owners believe that they should encourage users to install the native version of their online property or service. It’s not clear how aggressively to promote the apps, and a full page interstitial can interrupt the user from reaching their desired content.
On Google+ mobile web, we decided to take a closer look at our own use of interstitials. Internal user experience studies identified them as poor experiences, and Jennifer Gove gave a great talk at IO last year which highlights this user frustration.
Despite our intuition that we should remove the interstitial, we prefer to let data guide our decisions, so we set out to learn how the interstitial affected our users. Our analysis found that:
Despite our intuition that we should remove the interstitial, we prefer to let data guide our decisions, so we set out to learn how the interstitial affected our users. Our analysis found that:
- 9% of the visits to our interstitial page resulted in the ‘Get App’ button being pressed. (Note that some percentage of these users already have the app installed or may never follow through with the app store download.)
- 69% of the visits abandoned our page. These users neither went to the app store nor continued to our mobile website.
While 9% sounds like a great CTR for any campaign, we were much more focused on the number of users who had abandoned our product due to the friction in their experience. With this data in hand, in July 2014, we decided to run an experiment and see how removing the interstitial would affect actual product usage. We added a Smart App Banner to continue promoting the native app in a less intrusive way, as recommended in the Avoid common mistakes section of our Mobile SEO Guide. The results were surprising:
- 1-day active users on our mobile website increased by 17%.
- G+ iOS native app installs were mostly unaffected (-2%). (We’re not reporting install numbers from Android devices since most come with Google+ installed.)
Based on these results, we decided to permanently retire the interstitial. We believe that the increase in users on our product makes this a net positive change, and we are sharing this with the hope that you will reconsider the use of promotional interstitials. Let’s remove friction and make the mobile web more useful and usable!
(Since this study, we launched a better mobile web experience that is currently without an app banner. The banner can still be seen on iOS 6 and below.)
Posted by David Morell, Software Engineer, Google+
Posted by David Morell, Software Engineer, Google+
