Google rolling out new ways to find great deals on the shopping tab

When it comes to shopping online, users are desperately looking for new ways to save more money. In a recent trend, Google found that searches for “discount offers” and have increased 50% since last year. That’s why Google is rolling out new tools for ecommerce stores to list their best deals and discounts in the search results, which is currently free for all merchants in the United States.

This will help to build a bridge that will connect deal seekers between and online retailers who wants to promote their products on Google Shopping. Learn more about these new features that retailers can start using today.

Free Deals Listings in Google Search Results

Starting today, Google is showcasing deals in the shopping tab found on search results. For example, if you’re searching for “backpacks,” you can see a new section in shopping tab that will organize and show you “backpack deals” that are competitively priced or discounted from retailers across the web.

In October 2021, Google will start showing deals in the search results during major sales moments, like “Black Friday deals” or “Cyber Monday sales,” shoppers will see a new section highlighting relevant deals, alongside other related sales information.

Add More Inventory, Drive More Sales, Attract New Buyers

In the coming months, deals section will also appear on the main search results page. Merchants can take advantage of this feature regardless of whether they pay for advertising on Google. This will create great opportunities for ecommerce stores to add inventory, drive sales, attract new buyers and build brand awareness during important shopping events and peak holiday season.

How To Customize Promotions in Google Merchant Center?

Another update launched today in Merchant Center allows retailers to customize their promotions. It’s now possible to indicate if a deal is only available to first-time customers.

For example, the title of the promotion can now say “10% off for new members.” The promotions will be shown to all shoppers, but only those who meet a retailer’s specified criteria will be able to access the promotional price.

Google also adding new ways for creators and consumers to more easily connect — especially when it comes to product reviews.

Better Merchandising Insights

In one last update rolling out now, Google is adding two new features to the best sellers report:

Historical best seller data: Helps retailers predict sales trends for the upcoming season with insights into popular products from previous shopping events.

Relative product demand: Helps retailers gauge the relative demand between products in the same category and country, as well as the potential opportunity when stocking new products.

Merchants can access the best sellers report after opting into market insights within Merchant Center.

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How Google Ranks Search Results and Handles Spam

Google illustrated what different types of traffic drops look like.

Google publish in a blog post and described what types of organic search traffic drops look like in the Search Console Performance Reports  and how you can analyze those traffic drops. A drop in organic search traffic can happen for several reasons, and most of them can be reversed. But it may not be straightforward to understand what exactly happened to your site.

What are the main causes for drops in organic search traffic?

To help you understand about search traffic drops, Google posted sketches of “examples of drops and what they could potentially mean.”  This shows you visually what a site-wide technical issue or a manual action looks like compared to normal seasonality in search traffic, compared to a technical issue on a page level or an algorithm change (like a core update) or simply a reporting glitch in Search Console. Here are those sketches:

There are five main causes for drops in Search traffic:

Technical Issues: Errors that can prevent Google from crawling, indexing, or serving your pages to users – for example server availability, robots.txt fetching, page not found, and others. Note that the issues can be site-wide (for example, your website is down) or page-wide (for example, a misplaced noindex tag, which would depend on Google crawling the page, meaning there would be a slower drop in traffic).

Security Issues: If your site is affected by a security threat, Google may alert users before they reach your site with warnings or interstitial pages, which may decrease Search traffic.

Manual Actions: If your site does not comply with Google’s guidelines, some of your pages or the entire site may be omitted from Google Search results through a Manual Action.

Algorithmic Changes: Google is always improving how it assesses content and updating its algorithm accordingly; core updates and other smaller updates may change how some pages perform in Google Search results. To keep track of future updates, subscribe to our Google Search News YouTube series or follow us on Twitter.

Search Interest Disruption: Sometimes changes in user behavior will change the demand for certain queries, either as a result of a new trend, or seasonality throughout the year. This means your traffic may drop simply as a result of external influences.

How To Analyze Drop in Organic Search Traffic?

The best way to understand what happened to your traffic is to look at your Search Console Performance Report main chart, since it summarizes a lot of information. Analyzing the shape of the line will tell you a lot already.

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Google Added A New Page Experience Report in Search Console

Don’t just focus on any specific signal, improve your site performance overall better!

Google released a new video where John Mueller, Gary Illyes, Martin Splitt and a guest from the Google search quality team named Duy Nguyen talked about that how the search giant handles oblivious spam and how Google ranks search results. The video can be found here or watch on YouTube.

How Google Ranks Search Results?

I always like to listen from Google’s Official Representative such as John Mueller, Gary Illyes and Danny Sullivan. In this latest video Gary Illyes briefly explained about how Google ranks search results.

The short version is that Google first comes up with a short list, let’s say around 1,000 results, for a given query. That list is generated based on if the query and the content on a page are relevant and topical. Once the list is generated, Google then applies a lot of its ranking signals and factors to that shorter list. Gary Illyes said that is where “the magic” happens.

Gary Illyes further explained that these documents are assigned scores or numbers and Google “assigns a number and we calculate that number using the signals that we collected during indexing plus the other signals. And then essentially, what you see in the results is a reverse order based on those numbers that we assigned,” he said. Some examples of algorithms used are RankBrain and even the HTTPS boost – although the HTTPS boost is a tie breaker and would not ever really rearrange the search results he said.

It is highly recommend for SEOs, Site Owners and Webmaster that watch this part in this latest video conversation, started about after 28 minutes.

Google spam prevention and machine learning

Before Google told about how it ranks search results, Duy Nguyen from the search quality team, talked about the spam preventative measures. One thing he said that really stood out to me is that Google uses machine learning models to deal with the most obvious spam. I guess this shouldn’t surprise anyone, but it was nice to hear Google confirm that.

Duy Nguyen from Google said Google uses a “very effective and comprehensive machine-learning model that basically took care of most of the obvious spam.” This machine learning model lets the Google search quality team focus on “more important work,” he said. More important work might be around hacked spam, online scams and other issues that the machine learning models do not pick up.

Google’s machine learning models have years and years of data it uses to improve its spam prevention methods and search and it seems Google is very confident of its abilities.

Final Words

Like I mentioned above, I always want to learn from Google that how search engine works. In this latest episode, Google Search Team talk about that what is the most important factors in rankings. Like Duy Nguyen, said that “it is sad to see SEOs focus on a single metric, often an external metric that Google does not even use, instead of focusing on making better functionality, quality content, and an overall better user experience for your users. Google has hundreds of ranking signals, so focusing on one or two probably doesn’t give you the best chances to rank well in Google Search”.

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Google Added A New Page Experience Report in Search Console

A new tool for creative advertising

Google announced the launch of a new tool for creative advertising tools, called “Ads Creative Studio”, which aims to unify multiple creative tools. Ads Creative Studio will incorporate the following tools:

• Director Mix, previously available to a limited group of advertisers, will allow you to customize your creative for different audiences by building out multiple versions of a YouTube video ad with swappable elements.
• Dynamic Display and HTML5 are tools that allow you to generate customized and interactive creatives for Display & Video 360 and Campaign Manager 360.
• Audio Mixer and the recently announced dynamic audio offering allow you to build tailored audio ads for Display & Video 360 quickly and efficiently at scale.

What Does This Change Mean?

The goal of this change is to make it easier to build out multiple content pieces. The Ads Creative Studio will have separate libraries for assets, think of these as the building blocks for ads, and the project library, where the creators collaborate on ad creation.

Thanks to the asset library, it’s intended to streamline asset management. It can allow for one team to manage the raw assets, while another uses them to create advertisements.

Likewise, one team could use the raw assets to make display ads while another uses them to make YouTube ads, and keeping everything in one place would make it easier to ensure that everyone is pulling from the same approved set of assets. Ads will also be available to be used across projects, once created.

Designed to Increase Collaboration

The Ads Creative Studio is designed to improve collaboration between creative and media teams. Teams can work together to collaborate on templates, implement design rules, and implement QA processes all through the new tool.

How Are Ads Deployed?

Once ads are created, they are able to be exported to Google Ads, Display & Video 360 and Campaign Manager 360 for use.

The Future of Create with Google

In addition to the new tool, Google has announced that Create with Google has merged with Think with Google. Now all insights for creators and media teams will be hosted in the same place.

As per Google statement “We’re introducing Ads Creative Studio, a unified home for Google’s creative advertising tools, to help you build compelling experiences for video, display and audio ads. Ads Creative Studio will allow creative teams to build and innovate together while increasing productivity and simplifying the overall process to bring a great ad to life.”

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Google Added A New Page Experience Report in Search Console

The page experience update is rolling out to all users globally

Google’s Page Experience algorithm update is starting to roll out now and will be completed by the end of August 2021. The update will be slowly rolling out to all users globally. Top Stories will begin using the signal by this Thursday.

In an announcement, the company states:

“We’ll begin using page experience as part of our ranking systems beginning in mid-June 2021. However, page experience won’t play its full role as part of those systems until the end of August. You can think of it as if you’re adding a flavoring to a food you’re preparing. Rather than add the flavor all at once into the mix, we’ll be slowly adding it all over this time period.”

Sites should not expect to see drastic changes as a result of this update, Google says, and any sudden drops or spikes should be mitigated by the gradual rollout process.

The page experience update will consider several page experience signals, including the three Core Web Vitals metrics: LCP, FID, and CLS (as well as Chrome’s recent fix to CLS). In addition, the Top Stories carousel feature on Google Search will be updated to include all news content, as long as it meets the Google News policies. This means that using the AMP format is no longer required and that any page, irrespective of its Core Web Vitals score or page experience status, will be eligible to appear in the Top Stories carousel.

If you’re looking for more details, take a look at the Core Web Vitals & Page Experience Update FAQs.

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Google Added A New Page Experience Report in Search Console

Learn how to improve your content with Search Console Insights

Google is launching a new experience called Search Console Insights which is designed to help site owners better understand their audience. This experience joins data from both Search Console and Google Analytics in a joint effort to make it easy to understand content performance.

Whether you are a web content creator, blogger, or a website owner, and independent of your technical expertise, it can provide you with an overview and helpful insights on how your content is performing. This new experience will gradually be rolled out to all site owners in the upcoming days.

What is Search Console Insights?

This is a new experience tailored for content creators and publishers and can help them understand how audiences discover their site’s content and what resonates with their audiences. This new experience is powered by data from both Google Search Console and Google Analytics.

How can GSC Insights help you?

The new experience will help site owners, content creators and bloggers to better understand their content’s performance. For instance, it can help answer the following questions:

1. What are your best performing pieces of content?
2. How are your new pieces of content performing?
3. How do people discover your content across the web?
4. What people search for on Google before they visit your content?
5. Which article refers users to your website and content?

How can you access GSC Insights?

• Select GSC Insights from the top of Search Console’s Overview page.
• Use this link to access it directly and save a bookmark (you can always search for ‘search console insights’ on Google and visit our site!)
• Coming soon – In the iOS Google App, select Search Console Insights in the account menu (tap your profile picture).
• Google is working to also add Android Google App support.

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Google Search Console Drop Rich Result Performance Report

Does anyone know from where Google Knowledge Panel is picking?

If you search for [seo] and look at the Google Knowledge Panel on the right, you will see a section that says “Monthly Cost: $2819 per month.” That links to an SEO Company’s services packages page but it makes it looks like the monthly cost for SEO is that fee, no matter what firm you hire.

Here is a screen shot:

The Google Knowledge Panel is pulling that data in because the featured snippet for that query comes from that site. This is the interesting part but the bad part is that you all know that monthly cost for SEO services can range in a very big way and Google showing that for this or any other service like it is simply wrong.

This was spotted on Twitter and also other search terms such as ppc and other queries which are including salary, career growth, education, number of jobs, and other kind of details.  In the latest Knowledge Panel test, I’m seeing this in various different formats.

But the SEO Community is not looking happy. Here are some feedbacks:

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Find the best prices and places to buy with Google Shopping

All merchants need to meet professional standards on their websites

May 27, 2021 – Google announced a new Google Shopping and Google Merchant Center policy update where sites that do not meet certain professional and editorial standards would have their accounts suspended. They will be notified with a “Website needs improvement” policy status in their Merchant Center accounts.

Google said it “requires that all merchants meet certain professional and editorial standards on their websites. As such, Merchants with websites that do not meet basic requirements will see a ‘Website needs improvement’ policy status and have their accounts suspended until requirements are met. This policy is intended to protect users from poor shopping experiences, such as incomplete websites, confusing or inaccurate product information, broken links on the website, etc.”

Examples of what’s not allowed on Google Merchant Center

• Content that is unnecessarily difficult or frustrating to navigate
• Website that is not fully functional
• Website that has incomplete or difficult to understand business information
• Promotions that do not use commonly accepted spelling and grammar
• Punctuation, symbols, capitalization, spacing, or repetition that are not used correctly or for their intended purpose
• Promotions that are not relevant to the landing page
• Promotions that do not use the features of the Shopping ad for their intended purpose
• Website that is using generic placeholders or templated content
• Retailer landing pages or associated site domains that Google deems unsafe
• Website that has inaccurate, missing, or duplicate product details

You can learn more about how to improve your website and professional requirements from Google Merchant Center Help. Google said “in order to provide a quality user experience, Google requires that all Shopping ads meet high professional and editorial standards. We only allow promotions that are clear and professional in appearance. These ads should lead users to products and landing pages that are relevant, useful, and easy to interact with.”

If you get the website needs improvement notice Google said you can first “make sure that your website is fully-functional, has content specific to your business, and the information available is easy to understand and complete.” Google added that “your website shouldn’t have broken links, templated content, or placeholders of text or images.”

If you get the website needs improvement notice Google said you can first “make sure that your website is fully-functional, has content specific to your business, and the information available is easy to understand and complete.” Google added that “your website shouldn’t have broken links, templated content, or placeholders of text or images.”

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Find the best prices and places to buy with Google Shopping

Facebook Steps Up Efforts To Combat Misinformation

Facebook announced that they are launching new ways to inform people if they’re interacting with content that’s been rated by a fact-checker as well as taking stronger action against people who repeatedly share misinformation on Facebook. Whether it’s false or misleading content about COVID-19 and vaccines, climate change, elections or other topics, the social media giant will make sure that only few people can see misinformation.

Pages That Repeatedly Share False Claims

Facebook want to give people more information before they like a Page that has repeatedly shared content that fact-checkers have rated, so you’ll see a pop up if you go to like one of these Pages. You can also click to learn more, including that fact-checkers said some posts shared by this Page include false information and a link to more information about our fact-checking program. This will help people make an informed decision about whether they want to follow the Page.

Facebook Expanding Penalties For Individual Accounts

In late 2016, Facebook launched fact-checking program – aimed on reducing viral misinformation. Facebook took strong action against Pages, Groups, Instagram accounts and domains that sharing misinformation. Now, the company is expanding some of these efforts to include penalties for individual Facebook accounts too. Since today, Facebook will reduce the distribution of all posts in News Feed from an individual’s account if they repeatedly share content that has been rated by one of our fact-checking partners. Facebook already reduce a single post’s reach in News Feed if it has been debunked.

Redesigned Notifications When People Share Fact-Checked Content

Currently the Company only notify users when they share content that a fact-checker later rates, but now they redesigned these notifications to make it easier to understand when this happens. The notification includes the fact-checker’s article debunking the claim as well as a prompt to share the article with their followers. It also includes a notice that people who repeatedly share false information may have their posts moved lower in News Feed so other people are less likely to see them.

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Why Google decided to sunset the rich result search appearance?

Google announced that they are removing the generic rich result filter from the Google Search Console performance report search appearance section. It means that users will no longer to see that how well rich results are performing on the website. Instead, you will drill into each individual rich result that your site supports to see how they are doing.

What is Rich Result?

Rich Results (also known as “Rich Snippets ”) are normal Google search results with additional data displayed. This extra data is usually pulled from Structured Data found in a page’s HTML. Common Rich Snippet types include reviews, recipes and events.

Google said this generic one is no longer required since they have “breakouts for most rich result types.” Google added “in addition, we realize that grouping data for rich results is not ideal, as each type may have a significantly different behavior. Therefore we decided to sunset the Rich result search appearance in Google Search Console.”

So instead of filtering on “rich results” you will filter using the search appearance filter in the performance report on specific types. There are currently 19 supported search appearance types including a few AMP versions, Android app, event, FAQs, how-to, job details, job listings, practice problems, product results, Q&A, recipe rich rich results, recipe gallery, review snippets, special announcements, videos, web light, web story and more to come. The generic Rich Results would show “any type of rich result defined in structured data listed in the search gallery. This includes all rich-result subtypes such as job listing and AMP article rich results showing in the Google Search Console.

Here is the screenshot: 

The rich result performance report in Google Search Console is going away on August 1, 2021 from both the interface  including the API and this will not impact your website traffic from Google, it is just a reporting change.

SEO Takeaways From Google I/O 2021