A lot of things went on at Google this week with their reaction and best practices for Apple’s New iOS14 ATT Policies, content quality checks could be causing issues with indexation, plus good news for YouTube Channels as they can update their name and image without affecting their overall Google account.
ICYMI, here’s what happened at Google This Week.
- Google Provides Best Practices to Comply with Apple’s New iOS 14 ATT Policies
- Alphabet Reports Strong Q1 2021 Revenue Off The Back of Google Cloud and YouTube
- Google Says Pages May Need to Pass Quality Checks to be Indexed
- YouTube Channels Can Change Their Name Without Affecting Their Google Account
- Google Adds 3 New Travel Search Tools For People Ready to Travel Again
- Instant Match Rates Are Now Available For Customer Match Lists in Google Ads
- New Ways To Report A Google Search Indexing Issue
Google Provides Best Practices to Comply with Apple’s New iOS 14 ATT Policies
The latest Apple iOS 14 update requires that all apps submitted for review on or after April 26th must comply with App Tracking Transparency (ATT) policies and ask for permission when they use certain information from other companies’ apps and websites for advertising purposes, even if they already have user consent. Google have provided their best practices to make sure that advertisers promoting iOS apps or web-based conversions goals.
Make sure to expect performance fluctuations and to monitor your delivery and bid settings closely as the changes will affect conversion tracking and measurement.
Alphabet Reports Strong Q1 2021 Revenue Off The Back of Google Cloud and YouTube
Alphabet announced Q1 2021 earnings with $55.3 billion in revenue which is up 34% from $41.2 billion in Q1 2020. This result reflects elevated consumer activity online and broad based growth in advertiser revenue and indicated an increasing return to normal in some industries.
This momentum is driven by YouTube ad revenue and Google Cloud while their ‘Other Bets’ category continues to be a loss category.
Google Says Pages May Need to Pass Quality Checks to be Indexed
Gary Illyes from Google explained that if the content on a page does not pass quality checks, Google may not index it even if you manually try to submit the page to Google for indexing.
This means that even using the URL inspection tool in Google Search Console to request indexation isn’t a guarantee. While this is still quite vague, if you are having issues with certain pages not indexing then having a deeper look into the quality of the content on those pages could help.
YouTube Channels Can Change Their Name Without Affecting Their Google Account
Google has now enabled the possibility of changing the channel name and photo on your YouTube channel without having those same changes reflected across your Google Account. Previously, in order for a YouTube creator to change the name of their channel, they would have to change the name that’s displayed across all Google services.
Google Adds 3 New Travel Search Tools For People Ready to Travel Again
Google have announced three new features in Google Search around travel in a continued approach to maintain an edge over competitors in the online travel sector. This is off the back of them reporting that searches for hotels reached a 10-year high in April 2021, as did searches for “where can I travel” and “travel restrictions by country.”
The features include new travel COVID advisories in search results, new ways to explore destinations and a road trip planner.
Instant Match Rates Are Now Available For Customer Match Lists in Google Ads
Google has introduced instant matching for Customer lists in Google Ads to show the estimated percentage of the list that is usable as soon as you upload. The match rate data is also available for previously uploaded customer lists as well.
This will help to manage performance expectations and enable list troubleshooting much earlier if the match rate seems inaccurate. First-party data will continue to become more important with the deprecation of third-party cookies and Customer Match is a way for advertisers to take advantage of customer data with instant match rate making it more transparent and easier to use.
New Ways To Report A Google Search Indexing Issue
Google Search Console is testing a feature in the US to let site owners better debug and report indexing issues with the click of a button. This new form allows site owners to report issues directly to Google around Google Search indexing. Google will reassess whether it would be useful to expand this feature once it has been live for a few weeks.
Thank You for Reading
Have you noticed any changes from Google this week?
Check back next Friday for the latest from Google This Week.
