Abizy: Internet Blog for Marketers

Google has updated its rich results content guidelines to align better with the overall Google merchant guidelines thus disallowing rich results for products that are widely prohibited or regulated, or that can facilitate serious harm to self or others. These include, but are not limited to, weapons, recreational drugs, tobacco & vaping products and gambling-related products. New rich results guidelines. Google has updated the rich results product content guidelines to add this section: Don’t mark up content that promotes widely prohibited or regulated goods, services, or information that may facilitate serious and/or immediate or long term harm to self or others. This includes content related to firearms & weapons, recreational drugs, tobacco & vaping products and gambling-related products. Application. Google said this policy applies to all forms of rich result markup, including star ratings, prices, or availability information and more. This can impact products

You’ve likely heard by now that Google is updating Google Analytics from Universal Analytics (also known as GA3 or UA) to a new, upgraded version, Google Analytics 4 (GA4).  The migration for many of us from GA2 (Classic Analytics) to GA3 (Universal Analytics) was relatively painless 10 years ago. This migration isn’t quite as simple.  There are many differences between the current Google Analytics you’re likely using (UA) and the new version of Google Analytics (GA4), and not all of the features of UA are present in GA4.  Additionally, Google is pressing us to update now. As of July 1, 2023 , the free version of Google UA will no longer collect data.  That means that you need to seriously address your analytics plan as soon as possible to ensure that as of that date that your new GA4 property is tracking correctly and can provide you with accurate year-over-year data. Here’s how to migrate to Google Analytics 4. Phase 1: Create your GA4 property and launch it Of utmost importa

Google has updated its JavaScript SEO help document to add technical details on how to inject canonical link tags using JavaScript. Google added a new section titled “ properly inject rel=”canonical” link tag .” What is new. Here is the new section where Google recommends not to implement your canonical tags using JavaScript, but if you must, Google explains this is the proper way to do so. Google wrote: While we don’t recommend using JavaScript for this, it is possible to inject a rel=”canonical” link tag with JavaScript. Google Search will pick up the injected canonical URL when rendering the page. Here is an example to inject a rel=”canonical” link tag with JavaScript: Google added this warning stating “When using JavaScript to inject the rel=”canonical” link tag, make sure that this is the only rel=”canonical” link tag on the page. Incorrect implementations might create multiple rel=”canonical” link tag or change an existing rel=”canonical” link tag. Conflicting or multiple r

Sometimes the best SEO tools are free. Look no further than Google Sheets. While it’s not great at plotting ranking data (inverting the y-axis is always ugly), there are numerous ways to use Google Sheets for SEO. Here are 11 of the formulas and tips I find myself using for SEO on an almost daily basis – for keyword management, internationalization, content/URL management and dashboards. Get the daily newsletter search marketers rely on. Processing...Please wait. SUBSCRIBE See terms. Google Sheets formulas for keyword management  V LOOKUP CONCATENATE FLATTEN LOWER =VLOOKUP(text,[range to search],[column number to return],[true/false])  V LOOKUP ( documentation ) VLOOKUP, which stands for “vertical lookup”, is arguably one of the very first Google Sheet formulas for SEO anyone learns when getting into the game. VLOOKUP allows you to essentially combine two data sets on common values, an almost lowbrow JOIN in SQL if you will. I gene

Ready to learn a quick-and-easy way to get traffic predictions for any amount of time in the future? Seriously. This article will show you how you can: Predict traffic changes, and maybe even let your boss know when periods of stagnation or negative growth are to be expected. What to expect during times of increased or decreased traffic, so you could tell if your declines are in line with predictions, or if something might be going wrong and traffic is declining more than it should. Include a graph with an update to your boss or client of what’s coming in advance, so they know you aren’t just making excuses after the fact. Want to skip the info and just click a few buttons?  While we’ll be going through running the code to forecast your web traffic and what each of the sections does, you can skip this and  jump right to the Colab here  if you aren’t interested in knowing what’s going on and how to make adjustments. For those who want to run the code locally and be able to edi

While marketers have overcome many challenges in recent years, sadly, the second half of 2022 is poised to be very different from the first. Unprecedented macroeconomic factors such as high inflation, food and energy costs and the war in Ukraine are impacting our business. Hiring is starting to slow down, and the pressure is on. There is a good chance that you’ll probably be asked to do more with less, as budgets may be prioritized and cut in certain areas.  On the flip side, Google Search ad spend continues to rise. It’s the channel that is always on, the channel with the highest conversion rate and the channel that won’t go away. This part of the marketing mix is reliable and constant, but are the campaigns delivering success? Are they contributing to sales? Contributing to leads? Auction Insights is a powerful tool we’ve all come to use for understanding campaign performance against competitors. Search intelligence adds another layer of granularity to ensure you’re one step a

US Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr is requesting that Apple and Google ban TikTok from their app stores. The request is due to the social media apps “pattern of surreptitious data practices.” TikTok is not just another video app. That’s the sheep’s clothing. It harvests swaths of sensitive data that new reports show are being accessed in Beijing. I’ve called on @Apple & @Google to remove TikTok from their app stores for its pattern of surreptitious data practices. pic.twitter.com/Le01fBpNjn — Brendan Carr (@BrendanCarrFCC) June 28, 2022 The request comes after BuzzFeed News reported that US data had been accessed from China. TikTok had been adamant for years that any data access from US users had been kept in the US. But according to leaked audio, employees of TikTok have been able to access nonpublic data about TikTok users. “As you know TikTok is an app that is available to millions of Americans through your app stores, and it collects vast troves

The Google Maps Platform has added a bunch of new features for businesses to add deeper integration with its Google Maps Platform APIs to help those businesses streamline some of their integrations with Google Maps. These include the ability to embed Reserve with Google on your site, a new embed a store location tool, a Locator Plus feature, store locator analytics and more . Reserve With Google Embed Feature We have seen Reserve with Google feature in Google Search and Google Maps for a while now. Now, Google is allowing businesses to use the Reserve with Google feature on their own sites or portals. Google added new APIs to allow you to embed the Reserve with Google on your site and your own maps. Google said this allows for “end-to-end appointment booking flow, and connects users to a variety of services.” It allows your customers who are using your store locator an option for bookings, right within the locator, which creates an easier booking process. Here is how it works:

While Google’s newest campaign type, Performance Max (PMax), is devoid of keyword data,  some new information may help advertisers better steer their efforts with the product. PMax campaigns are unique to all other campaign types as no keywords are required and no keyword data is delivered to advertisers. The closest existing campaign type is the fully automated shopping-only product , “Smart Shopping” which will be shuttered in July. The big difference between the two is that Performance Max campaigns can run without a product feed and can also include local ad elements.  Those PMax campaigns without a feed or local inputs can gain inventory on Google search by simply inputting a website or pages into the campaign. Due to the fully automated nature of the campaign, Google will then choose keywords to show on Google Search as well as other placements on Gmail/YouTube/Display/Discover .  Performance Max matching in search Many advertisers rightfully want to know what this means for

After your technical , content and outreach strategies are in place, you should be well on your way to digital marketing success.  At this stage, you should have optimized your website for a strong page experience, created lots of entity-driven content, and gained inbound links providing you with rankings and traffic. Now, you’ll need to empower your team with the right data to help you continue to grow and shape your digital marketing strategy. Setting up your dashboards Fortunately, a myriad of tools can help organize the data you need to keep your traffic growing. Here are some data points you can look at: Overall KPIs: Are your site’s sessions, impressions, clicks and conversions trending up or down? Keywords ranking: How many keywords are ranking in the top 1-3, 4-10, 11-20, or in the top 100 of Google? What keywords are gaining or losing traction? What is the estimated traffic cost of these keywords? What keywords are seeing the most volume and conversions? Pages t