Important News We Are Watching From This Week

Be in the Know on Microsoft Advertising

Be in the know! This week we have found a few nuggets that you may want to review or do a deeper dive into from our blog post.

Is It Worth Writing Website Meta Descriptions?

“Many SEOs debate the importance of creating unique meta descriptions. It can definitely help with click-through-rate from SERPs, but, for most, it’s often a low priority SEO task. Will the news that Google overwrites our work make us less likely to spend time on it?” Read the full article.

From our point of view, we do still recommend writing these to assist in click through rates from the search results. We have seen Google write there own before and then later roll back their action.  It makes sense to write them and if Google does or does not use them is a non-issue at this point.


Google is Tweaking the Layout of Google Local or Google Maps Listings

We are seeing the removal of addresses in Google Maps listing tests by Google. See pic.

Google also appears to be listing the years in business in some Google Maps listings. Read the article and see the pic.


Google Ads Does Away with Broad Match Modifiers

Google has announced that it will no longer honor broad match modifier keywords and will instead merge the broad match modifier into phrase match. For now if there are broad match modifier keywords in the account, Google will simply deliver them as phrase match.

How do we feel about this? Well, we expect to spend more time on negative keywords list creation to sculpt ad results. We are not terribly worried about this due to the extensive use of machine learning used in ad delivery. We do expect broad match modifier keywords in the account to start to receive fewer and fewer impressions over time. We will no longer add broad match modifier  to ad accounts. Read the full article for more details.

1-29-21 What We Are Watching This Week

McCord Web Services is a Google Partner and a Certified Google Ads Professional

There are just a few new things in the world of Google that we are watching this week.

Rich Snippet Changes

Google has a new validation tool for Rich Snippets you may be using on your website. You’ll want to click in and check your code in the new validation tool as Google is stating that they will drop your snippets indexing in search if you do not make updates to have the code be valid. Read the full detailed article here.

Local Service Ads and the Impact on Standard Google Ads Campaigns

In 2020 Google started testing Local Service Ads for lawyers. A number of firms have done research on how using both Google Ads and Local Service Ads impacts Google Ads performance negatively.

After review of the data, it appears that Local Service Ads will be shown preferentially by Google and are typically clicked on more by users due to the richness of the interface and ad appearance. CTR and CPA are negatively impacted in Google Ads when the client is using both programs.

If you are using Local Service Ads AND Google Ads (standard professional version), you will want to dive in and read the full article.

Google Ads New Call Ads and Call Recording

Call recording is new for Google Ads. Rolled out this past week in many of our client accounts is a feature to record and hold for 30 days calls from call extensions and the use of Call Ads in your account.

To enable these new call recording options, click into your campaign tab and then select settings > account. Then open the Call section and select to allow call recording. You will need to accept Google’s EULA.

To listen to call recordings, you will go to the Reports tab at the top and then create a report of the date range of your choosing for calls and call extensions. Google will auto populate a report with links to listen to actual calls.

What we have found is that for some clients based on the recordings, we are moving them to a call schedule for their business open times and not showing click to call and call extensions when the business is not open.

For others, we are finding that the call recordings validate the usefulness of using Google Ads and a budget increase may be warranted to get more activity.

Please note that calls from your website if you are using this conversion type will not be recorded only those associated with Call Extensions.

For us, we find that this extra option allows us as account managers to do a reality check on the phone call traffic we are driving with click activity. For clients. the call recordings will allow validation of responses taken by staff to fine tune a message or increase training to better serve customers and potential prospects from their first phone contact after a click.

We invite you to find out more about our Google Ads services and our Google Partner status on our website.