Didn’t keep up with all the search engine updates this week? Myposeo’s got your back! Here are some of the key updates that rolled out this week.
News #1: Google’s Merchant Center’s rolls out update ahead of Holiday Season
With the holiday season around the corner, Google launched new identifier enforcement updates to Google Shopping that can affect the visibility of products on the platform.
On September 30th, Google announced that it would be updating its enforcement rules for UPIs (unique product identifiers). Previously, Google Merchant Center disapproved of products without UPIs but with the new update, merchants can list products with missing UPIs and still be eligible for Shopping ads!
Although products without UPIs will be essentially listed below your competitors, which is not ideal but its a starting point.
This is a great victory for merchants to gain exposure for their products on Google Shopping without UPIs. The biggest benefit to having products without a UPI listed lower than products with correct and complete UPIs will allow multiple sellers advertising the same products with UPIs to get priority visibility on the platform.
Find out more about UPIs and how to use them with the new update here.
Source: Search Engine Land
News #2: Bing releases new penalties for ‘Inorganic Site Structure’ violations
On Monday, Bing announced the introduction of spam penalties against ‘inorganic site structure’ violations on the search engine. The penalty was introduced to address malpractice and tactics such as doorway content, subdomain leasing and private blog networks.
These malpractices and tactics have long-existed on multiple search engines to increase site rankings and positions. By introducing this penalty, site owners undertaking such practices will negatively affect their organic visibility and may even result in delisting the site from the search engine!
Site owners would be advised to stay clear of such tactics in general, but more so now with Bing’s penalties rolling out. Learn all about these violations here.
Source: Search Engine Land
News #3: Facebook rebrands with New Logo
In case you’ve been living under a rock or had terrible wifi (as I did yesterday) you have seen Facebook’s attempt at a rebrand by changing their logo to a caps lock version of itself. (Cue memes here).
Although the internet is laughing about it, what is the real reason Facebook rebranded with this new colour-changing logo? If you haven’t noticed, take a closer look into the actual colours the logo is changing into.
Yes, the Facebook brand logo now transitions into the brand colours of popular apps that it owns – Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp.
The new branding has been designed to introduce clarity to audiences so that they understand that while these applications provide separate services, they are all owned by the parent company – Facebook.
The custom letterpress and size was introduced to create a visual and obvious distinction between the Facebook company and the application.
The social media giant has acquired many services and applications since its inception which have become popular and now, they want the world to know it. Since June, they began adding ‘from Facebook’ within all of their apps and over the next few weeks, they will start using their new branding within all products and marketing material and will even have a new company website.
Source: Arobasenet.com
News #4: Youtube Ad Extensions introduced by Google
Google is improving user interactivity on YouTube with the introduction of new ad extensions to make it easier for users to take action, thereby allowing businesses to meet their goals.
These extensions will give YouTube viewers useful and actionable information like lead generation forms, store locations etc. alongside the video ad for easy access and direct visibility.
The call to action extensions which are available for TrueView in-stream and non-skippable ads will now also be available for the 6 second bumper ads as well.
Sitelink extensions will also be available for all TrueView for action ads in the foreseeable future as a beta test found that adding sitelinks resulted in 50% more clicks and 23% more conversions for the 30 advertisers who tested it.
Source: Search Engine Journal
