Daily Minute Master Series – August 13, 2019

Marketing

Hotels can now add services, amenities in Google My Business

Google My Business added support for hotels to login to Google My Business and update the hotel’s services and amenities details. Google provides a summary of a hotel’s amenities that customers can view from Google Search and/or Google Maps. You can edit this information in your dashboard if you find any of it to be factually incorrect. Google is becoming the go-to-place for searchers to look to for hotel reviews, pricing and details. It is important that you keep the hotels you manage up-to-date and accurate, so that a hotel customer doesn’t get upset that the information they saw on Google doesn’t match the actual hotel’s accommodations. It is also important to keep your hotel’s details accurate by you taking the lead and controlling what is shown within Google.

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Ecosia says it will boycott ‘search choice’ auction on Android in Europe

Berlin-based search engine Ecosia says it will not participate in Google’s “search-choice” auction for Android devices in 2020 in Europe. Will other engines follow its lead? Earlier this month, Google announced that it will introduce a new “choice screen” in Europe for Android users in 2020. The screen will appear during set up and ask users to select a default search engine. Google plans to use an auction, as it does with comparison shopping engines in Europe, to determine which search engines to present on the choice screen. The three highest bidders will appear, along with Google, as options for users. Google anticipates search choices will vary by country, with Google always present as a choice. Ecosia believes that it is unethical for a company with a dominant market position like Google Android to discriminate access to it. By artificially limiting user options, Google is creating scarcity where there is none. This will unnecessarily increase costs for alternative search engines, and will keep new entrants from growing market share. Whether or not there are 4 or 14 options for users to choose from, Google would still likely retain most of its current usage in Europe, because of its brand strength versus rivals. This is the central challenge for regulators, which are trying to “unbundle” Google and Android: how to give Google’s competitors more visibility (and viability). It will be very interesting to see whether other search engines align themselves with Ecosia or decide to participate in the auction. Applications are due in mid-September.

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Prepare to say goodbye to average position in Google Ads on September 30

Google announced Monday that it will begin sunsetting the average position metric the week of September 30. In lieu of average position, Google says advertisers should transition to using the position metrics— search top impression rate and search absolute top impression rate — introduced last year. These indicate the percentage of impressions and impression share your ads received in the absolute top (the first ad at the very top of the page) and top of page (above the organic results) ad slots. Now, we have about 6 weeks to fully absorb the repercussions of the change and implement updates to any reporting, rules or scripts that use average position.

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Advertising

Google Ads’ Optimization Score Now Includes Shopping Campaigns

Optimization scores in Google Ads will now include shopping campaigns as well as search campaigns. Google Ads will assign an individual score to each campaign type, and provide a combined score at the account level. Scores for shopping campaigns range from 0% to 100% – a score of 100% means the campaign is optimized to perform at its full potential. This update comes with new recommendations that are specific to shopping campaigns, such as switching to Smart Shopping campaigns and adding seller ratings. According to Google, advertisers saw an average increase of 10% in their conversion rates after increasing their account level optimization score by 10 points. 

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