Google Announces Passage-Based Ranking & This Week’s Digital Marketing News [PODCAST]

Jess Budde, Greg Finn, and Christine “Shep” Zirnheld are breaking down all the digital marketing news of the week on this week’s Marketing O’Clock podcast.

If you’re unable to listen on Spotify, be sure to catch the video version of the show on the Search Engine Journal YouTube channel.

Google Announces Passage-Based Indexing

Google announced a number of upcoming changes and improvements coming to Search, including the revelation that it will soon be able to identify individual passages on a webpage to surface relevant content in the search results.

Another change coming soon allows us to identify individual passages in a web page and process them as perhaps being most relevant to a search. We expect this will improve 7% of search queries in Google. #SearchOn pic.twitter.com/cUwnuVyWwH

— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) October 15, 2020

New Google Shopping Features

Google announced new shopping features that will benefit both shoppers and retailers this upcoming holiday season.

Consumer-Facing Changes

• Price comparison: Items may be labeled to specify whether their prices are high, low, or typical compared to other products on Google Shopping.
• Price tracking: Shoppers can opt-in to receive price tracking alerts in Gmail or the Google app.

Changes for Retailers

• Merchant promotions: Merchant promotions are now available in the U.S. and will be shown in more locations across Google for both free and organic shopping listings. Google also said that they will be speeding up the approval process for the holiday shopping season.
• New Smart Shopping goal: The new customer acquisition goal for Smart Shopping campaigns is now out of beta and available to all advertisers.
• New Google Shopping reporting: Auction Insights metrics will be available for shopping campaigns in Google Ads Report Editor

Google Is Charged in Antitrust Lawsuit

The United States Department of Justice is suing Google over multiple violations of antitrust law related to online search.

The suit is the result of a year-long investigation into the tech giant.

New Facebook Ecommerce Features

Facebook announced new ecommerce features ahead of the holiday shopping season.

First, brands will be able to create ads with shoppable product tags directly from the Facebook Ads Manager.

They also announced new ecommerce-focused audiences including shopping engagement custom audiences and shopping lookalike audiences for brands who use Facebook Shops.

Brands will also be able to manage and promote sales for their Shop in the Promotions tab of Commerce Manager.

In our Take of the Week segment, digital marketers wrote some passionate limericks about the challenges they face in response to Tim Halloran‘s poetry challenge.

This is called “Ode to Facebook” ❤️

***
There once was a young man that managed ads,
Who hated when half-baked ad-tech made him look bad,
“I’ve got it!” he said,
“I’ll simply never get out of bed,”
And now all his clients are mad.
***#ppcchat #fbadschat (2/2)

— Tim Halloran ☕️ (@timmhalloran) October 13, 2020

Then, ICYMI, Pamela Lund has some advice for advertisers with upcoming Facebook campaign launches. Don’t wait.

Facebook approvals are super slow right now so if you’ve got a sale, launch, etc coming up next week get your campaigns/ads built out right meow.

— Pamela Lund (@Pamela_Lund) October 21, 2020

We’ll answer your burning digital marketing questions during our lightning round segment:

• Who just made Target ROAS bidding available to advertisers on their platform?
• What you need to know about the new Google Tag Manager preview tool.
• When do most people listen to podcasts?
• Where you can look to find the best seafood in Colorado.
• Why advertisers who utilize the Facebook Audience Network might soon be pivoting their strategy.
• How the Biden campaign just became the poster child for turning off Search Partners ad placements.

Check out the Marketing O’Clock site to subscribe to the show and read all the articles featured on today’s show.

Thank you to our sponsor, Upfluence!

Featured Image Credit: Cypress North