There have been some exciting updates at Google This Week with Google Business Profile new manager and owner limitations, YouTube’s new updates to YouTube Studio App plus new Video Performance Chart Filters, Google AdSense re-enabling its related search experiments, and more.
ICYMI, here’s what happened at Google This Week.
- YouTube Adds New Updates to YouTube Studio App
- Google Ads Issue Is Affecting A Significant Subset Of Users
- Google Search Console Is Experimenting With An Announcement Bar
- Cross-Channel Data-Driven Attribution Now Available In Attribution Reports
- Google AdSense Related Search Experiments Re-Enabled
- Google Ads Releases Disapproved Ads Auditor Tool
- Google’s Page Experience Update Coming To Desktop Next Month
- Google Business Profile New Manager And Owner Limitations
- Load Google Scripts Through Server-Side Tagging
- YouTube Adds New Filters To Its Video Performance Chart
YouTube Adds New Updates to YouTube Studio App
YouTube has outlined some new updates to its YouTube Studio mobile app, giving creators more flexibility to manage their channels on the go, while also making it easier to monitor performance across both desktop and mobile.
The biggest update is the addition of new search filters for comments, giving creators more ways to maximize engagement by interacting with fans.
New filter options include:
- Response status: have I already responded to this comment?
- Contains question: does the comment contain a question?
- Subscriber count: does the commenter have at least a certain number of subs?
- Subscriber status: is the commenter publicly subscribed to me?
- Member status: is the commenter a channel member?
- Search: Do any comments contain a specific word I want to search for?
Google Ads Issue Is Affecting A Significant Subset Of Users
Google has confirmed an issue with Google Ads that are “affecting a significant subset of users.” This bug impacts Google Ads conversions that use non-First/Last Click attribution models, such as Data Driven Attribution.
Shortly after posting this story, Google updated the status to report the issue is resolved. Conversions delayed by this incident, those making use of non-First/Last Click attribution models, are now present in Google Ads.
Google Search Console Is Experimenting With An Announcement Bar
Google is testing a new feature with an “Announcement bar” displayed at the top of the Google Search Console. The bar does not yet seem to function properly but has three levels of announcements depending on the urgency of the information.
Types of announcements. Google Search Console shows these three types of announcements bars:
- Informational announcement
- Minor issue announcement
- Major issue announcement
John Mueller from Google said “If anyone else is seeing this in Search Console, this is a test on our side of the notification functionality that shouldn’t have been visible externally — sorry for the confusion.”
Cross-Channel Data-driven Attribution Now Available In Attribution Reports
The cross-channel Data-Driven Attribution model is now available in the Attribution reports (Conversion Paths and Model Comparison) within the Advertiser Workspace. DDA and all rules-based attribution models have also been added to the property-level Reporting Attribution Model selector in Admin > Attribution Settings.
Google AdSense Related Search Experiments Re-Enabled
Google has announced that it has re-enabled the AdSense related search experiments. AdSense publishers can once again create Related search Custom search style experiments in their AdSense account.
You can access this by clicking into Optimization and then Experiments and try to make a Custom search style, you may run into an issue soon.
Google Ads Releases Disapproved Ads Auditor Tool
Google has released a Disapproved Ads Auditor Tool for Google Ads that flags and “enables advertisers to review at scale all disapproved ads across their Google Ads accounts”.
To integrate this into your software you need to have skills in Python, BigQuery API, Google Ads API and OAuth 2.0. The tool is based on a Python script, which can be run in either of the following modes:
“Audit Mode”- export an output of disapproved ads across your accounts
“Remove Mode” – delete currently disapproved ads and log details.
Google’s Page Experience Update Coming To Desktop Next Month
Malte Ubl, a Software Engineer at Google confirmed that Google will be releasing the desktop version of the page experience update. He reconfirmed in his tweet saying “metric threshold are the same as on mobile.”
Page experience ranking in Google Search based on Core Web Vitals on Desktop (Laptop/Tablets/the 523.94 remaining actual Desktop computers) is going out next month. Metric threshold are the same as on mobile. https://t.co/oVFF0W2Zih https://t.co/KKBIEi6v0Z
— Malte Ubl (@cramforce) January 10, 2022
The original blog post said “the same three Core Web Vitals metrics: LCP, FID, and CLS, and their associated thresholds will apply for desktop ranking.”
Google Business Profile New Manager And Owner Limitations
Google Business Profiles has set a waiting period for new owners and managers. Newly granted users now must wait 7 days before they can manage all the features of their Google Business Profile.
During this 7 day period, the new owner or manager gets an error if they try any of the following:
- Delete or undelete a profile.
- Remove other owners or managers from a profile.
- Transfer primary ownership of a profile to themselves or a third user.
- An existing owner or manager tries to transfer primary ownership of the profile to a new owner or manager still in their first 7 days.
If the new owner or manager deletes their account within the first 7 days, they’re removed from the profile. If they undelete their account, they must be added to the profile again.
Load Google Scripts Through Server-Side Tagging
Server-Side Tagging in Google Tag Manager now allows you to load Google scripts such as gtm.js or gtag.js directly from your tagging server instead of from Google’s servers.
By default, Automatically serve all dependent Google scripts checkbox is enabled. This updates the behavior of the tag so its dependencies (e.g. gtag.js, analytics.js, ec.js, etc.) are also requested from the tagging server. If you wish to serve only the initial container from the tagging server, deselect this option.
YouTube Adds New Filters To Its Video Performance Chart
YouTube recently launched a new analytics option to YouTube Studio enabling users to visualise the performance of their uploads. You can now view a scatter plot of all the videos and their comparative performance on variable timelines.
This new element now enables you to also select ‘Show videos with similar topics’ from the plot display, which will then switch the graph to a specific listing of uploads on the same subject. To access your video performance chart, go to: Channel analytics > Advanced mode > Compare to’ > ‘First 24 hours video performance’.
Thank You for Reading
Have you noticed any changes from Google this week?
Check back next Friday for the latest from Google This Week.
