It’s been another relatively quiet week at Google This Week but we do still have quite a few interesting updates for you. This week, Google has been making improvements to reporting with a new performance report in Google My Business, improvements to the Index Coverage Report and a new Google News performance report. Google has also been sending out HTTP/2 Googlebot crawling notifications and there’s more news around YouTube with new metrics and side-by-side video analysis.
ICYMI, here’s what happened at Google This Week.
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- New Performance Reporting in Google My Business
- Improvements to Index Coverage Report
- Introducing Google News Performance Report
- Google Bans All Political Ads Through Inauguration
- Google Sends HTTP/2 Googlebot Crawling Notifications
- YouTube Adds ‘First 24 Hours’ Metric and Side by Side Analysis
- Google Paving the Way to Privacy-Centric Measurement on YouTube
New Performance Reporting in Google My Business
Google is rolling out new performance reports in Google My Business. The new reports have been a long time coming. We have reported on new features announced in August and last month.
You can access the reports via the “Insights” section after logging in to your GMB account. You may see a message that says “Your insights are moving” Click on the “See new profile performance” to see the new metrics.
It will show you the number of calls and messages you got within the last 6 months. You’ll also see search terms used to find your business listing in Google Search and Maps. The new report does not cover website clicks, driving directions and whether users found you via Search or Maps, like the current Insights report.
Improvements to Index Coverage Report
Google is introducing improvements to the Index Coverage report in Google Search Console. So you’re better informed on issues that might prevent Google from crawling and indexing your pages, the changes are focussed on providing a more accurate state to existing issues.
The changes include:
- Removal of the generic “crawl anomaly” issue type – all crawls errors should now be mapped to an issue with a finer resolution.
- Pages that were submitted but blocked by robots.txt and got indexed are now reported as “indexed but blocked” (warning) instead of “submitted but blocked” (error).
- Addition of a new issue: “indexed without content” (warning).
- Soft 404 reporting is now more accurate.
Introducing Google News Performance Report
Google is introducing a Google News performance report to help publishers better understand user behaviour on Google News on the apps and news.google.com.
You can access your performance report in Search Console by clicking Google News in the performance section. The report includes metrics like impressions, clicks, and click-through rate. These insights are in addition to Search Console reports about Google Search, Discover, and the News tab on Search.
Google Bans All Political Ads Through Inauguration
Google has banned all political ads until after the inauguration. The ban will last at least a week beginning January 14. Google says they plan to continually monitor and reassess the decision.
Ads mentioning politics, impeachment, the inauguration and the insurrection at the US Capitol will be banned. The ban includes ads run by news organisations and merchandisers.
Google paused some of our ads because of this, which I would understand … except they related to the elections in Cote d’Ivoire & Belarus & just happened to include the words President & election.
— Charlotte Edwards (@CEanalytics) January 14, 2021
Google Sends HTTP/2 Googlebot Crawling Notifications
Google is sending out notices to let publishers know that they’ve begun crawling their websites with the HTTP/2 protocol. The notice is only being sent out to those whose sites have been upgraded.
HTTP/2 is more efficient than the older HTTP/1.1 and is able to transfer data at faster rates, resulting in less server load and your site will remain fast for users.
“In our evaluations we found little to no benefit for certain sites (for example, those with very low qps) when crawling over h2. Therefore we have decided to switch crawling to h2 only when there’s clear benefit for the site. We’ll continue to evaluate the performance gains and may change our criteria for switching in the future.”
YouTube Adds ‘First 24 Hours’ Metric and Side by Side Analysis
YouTube is launching a new metric that enables creators to analyse the performance of a video within the first 24 hours after publishing. It can be accessed in the video analytics section of the YouTube creator studio.
You’ll be able to see the total watch time, how many subscribers you gained or lost and how much revenue you earned in the first 24 hours.
Google is also launching the ability to compare 2 videos side-by-side.
Traffic sources are broken down by:
- Browse features: Views received from YouTube recommendations.
- Notifications: Views received from subscribers clicking on a notification.
- Channel pages: Views received from people clicking on it on your channel page.
- External: Views received from people finding the video off-site, such as social media.
- Direct: Views received from people navigating to the URL directly.
Google Paving the Way to Privacy-Centric Measurement on YouTube
Google is paving the way to privacy-centric measurement on YouTube with the announcement of Media Rating Council (MRC) accreditations for Ads Data Hub, a first for a clean-room-based measurement product in the industry.
“Finally, Ads Data Hub is paving the way for a durable future for measurement on YouTube, enabling cross-publisher reporting by third-parties that are compatible with the privacy-centric world.”
Ads Data Hub has been accredited by MRC for Sophisticated Invalid Traffic (SIVT)-filtered, rendered and viewable ad impressions and TrueView Views generated through the Ads Data Hub user interface and API. Accreditation covers desktop, mobile web and mobile in-app for YouTube and Google Video Partners video ads on Google Ads, Display & Video 360 and YouTube Reserve. It includes the processes used in the matching of unique audience identifiers.
“With the MRC accreditation of Ads Data Hub and the full migration of global third-party brand-measurement partners, advertisers will gain more comprehensive reporting and measurement, using technology that’s built to enhance user privacy. We are thrilled to mark a big step toward durable, privacy-centric, trustworthy measurement and remain committed to innovation for more capabilities in the future.”
Thank You for Reading
Have you noticed any changes from Google this week?
Check back next Friday for the latest from Google This Week.
