It’s been a huge week at Google This Week with an enormous amount of news to cover. We’ve summed up the most important changes below. Some of the biggest stories came out today with Google Ads deprecating broad match, standardised conversion attribution across video campaigns and Google News Showcase launching today in Australia.
ICYMI, here’s what happened at Google This Week.
- YouTube Announces Clips for Live Streams
- Google My Business Enables Send Edit Feedback
- Updates to Event Structured Data Requirements
- Google Adds Black-owned Business Label to Product Results
- Google Adds “About This Result” Feature to Search Results
- Search Console Discover Report Now Includes Chrome Data
- Google Tag Manager Launches parseURL API
- Active View to Use Open Measurement SDK on Mobile App Display Inventory
- Advertiser-level Users to Access and Create Custom Bidding Scripts
- Use Regional and Proximity Geography Targeting Together
- New Duration Setting and Default Ad Changes Coming to Campaign Manager 360
- Event Tag Assignment Coming to the Campaign Spreadsheet in Campaign Manager 360
- Google Test to Compare Search Results
- Google Analytics No Longer Supports YouTube Data
- Google to Enforce Price Accuracy at Checkout
- The Best of Broad Match Rolled into Phrase Match
- Google Ads Standardises Conversion Attribution Across All Video Campaigns
- Google News Showcase Launched in Australia
YouTube Announces Clips for Live Streams
YouTube is testing a Clips feature which allows users to make short, shareable videos out of creators’ live streams. Clipping is not a new feature but it is for YouTube.
It’s highly popular on Twitch so could prove to be a significant new feature for YouTube. Viewers can grab footage from a live stream, between 5 to 60 seconds in length and share it. This isn’t rolling out just yet, but an experimental version is being launched in testing.
Google My Business Enables Send Edit Feedback
Amy Toman first spotted a new feature in Google Local and Google My Business. The new feature allows you to send through additional feedback to Google when a suggested edit you made to a Google business listing was not accepted.
This will help users know when their edits are not applied and will help in communication with Google to send through more information to get the change applied to the listing.
Ok, either this is new, or I missed it. In any case, being able to respond to a “not applied” GMB edit is amazing! Has anyone used this, and has it changed the result of an edit? #LocalSEO pic.twitter.com/mLdDbIzHTv
— Amy Toman ❄⛄? (@BubblesUp) January 28, 2021
Updates to Event Structured Data Requirements
Google has updated event structured data requirements. The update affects the offers.priceCurrency property and publishers who charge for events, including paid online/home events.
In order to be eligible to appear for rich results, all of the required structured data must be presented to Google in the JSON-LD structured data. The offers.priceCurrency property is a required property.
Google Adds Black-owned Business Label to Product Results
The Black-owned business label was first launched for the Google local business results in July 2020. The label is now supported by Google Merchant Center. Black-owned businesses can now also show the label in their product and shopping results in Google Search.
The label reads “identifies as Black-owned”. Google said this “feature will become visible to shoppers and available to all U.S. Google Merchants in the coming months.” Currently the label is only available in the U.S.
Google Adds “About This Result” Feature to Search Results
Google has added an “About this result” feature to search. You can find the feature by clicking on a menu icon in the top right of most search snippets. The feature gives you additional information about the site (where the information is coming from), to help you make more informed decisions about the sites you visit.
When available you’ll see a description of the website from Wikipedia, if unavailable Google will serve additional context such as when the site was first indexed. For features where Google organises different types of information like job listings or local business listings, you’ll see a description of how Google sources the information. You’ll also be able to tell whether your connection to the site is secure (HTTPS).
Google is rolling out this feature this week in English in the U.S. on desktop, mobile web and the Google App on Android.
Search Console Discover Report Now Includes Chrome Data
The Search Console Discover report now includes Chrome data. Previously, Discover traffic from Chrome was not included in the Discover performance report. Users may open a new tab in Chrome on Android or iOS, where Discover also lives and view there. This data is now supported. Previously, the report only included Discover data from the Google app on Android or iOS. The new data will gradually roll in over the coming months.
Google Tag Manager Launches parseURL API
Google Tag Manager has launched the parseURL API for custom templates and server-side Tag Manager. The parseURL returns an object that contains all of a given URL’s component parts.
Active View to Use Open Measurement SDK on Mobile App Display Inventory
Active View measurement will start to use signals from the Open Measurement (OM) SDK when measuring viewability for mobile app display inventory in Display & Video 360 and Campaign Manager 360.
This change will begin in March and will bring Active View in line with industry standards. You may notice a small change in mobile app display measurability and viewability. This change only impacts Active View measurement on inventory where the OM SDK is available.
Advertiser-level Users to Access and Create Custom Bidding Scripts
Advertiser-level users will soon be able to access and create custom bidding scripts in Display & Video 360. Currently, custom bidding is only available at the partner level.
Users with advertiser limited access to DV360 will be able to create, maintain and assign custom bidding scripts to the advertisers they can access.
Use Regional and Proximity Geography Targeting Together
In Display & Video 360, you’ll soon be able to use regional and proximity geography targeting in the same line item, in order to allow for more fine-grained geography targeting.
New Duration Setting and Default Ad Changes Coming to Campaign Manager 360
New optional duration setting and default ad changes coming soon to help streamline in-stream video workflows in Campaign Manager 360. These changes will roll out in the coming weeks.
- Optional placement-level duration setting: In-stream video placements will get a new optional duration setting to control which creatives are eligible to serve depending on length. This will help ensure your videos match requirements on duration and prevent serving errors.
- Duration setting in the campaign spreadsheet: Starting March 2, a new column ‘Placement Duration’ will be available in the campaign spreadsheet so you can set the optional duration setting. If you have tools or scripts you use to generate campaign spreadsheets, we recommend updating them to include the new columns.
- Default ad updates: Default ads for in-stream video will be updated to allow multiple creative assignments, one per unique duration within a campaign. You can assign default ads with multiple in-stream video creatives to any in-stream video placement with a matching duration setting.
Event Tag Assignment Coming to the Campaign Spreadsheet in Campaign Manager 360
To make it easier to apply and edit event tags in bulk in Campaign Manager 360, event tag assignment is coming on March 2 to the campaign spreadsheet. You’ll notice new columns in the spreadsheet to update event tag assignments for ads and creatives:
- Applied Impression Event Tag IDs
- Applied Click Event Tag ID
- Creative Assignment Event Tags Enabled
While you can import campaign spreadsheets without the new columns, we recommend updating any tools or scripts used to generate campaign spreadsheets with the new columns.
Google Test to Compare Search Results
Google appears to be testing a method to compare a set of search results after entering a query. You can select a number of search result snippets to compare. The notice reads “quickly compare pages by making a group. To start, touch & hold a link.” The test appears to be a Chrome desktop feature now being tested on mobile.
Google Analytics No Longer Supports YouTube Data
Google is deprecating the connection between Google Analytics and YouTube channel pages. New data from YouTube channel pages will no longer be collected. Google Analytics stopped collecting the data on February 1, 2021. Historical data will remain accessible, but no new data will be collected.
Google to Enforce Price Accuracy at Checkout
In April, Google will begin to review and enforce price accuracy at checkout in addition to reviewing and enforcing price accuracy between your Merchant Center product data and your landing pages.
If Google finds the price provided at checkout is higher than the price listed for that product on the landing page, you will receive a 28-day warning. Without resolution your account will be subject to suspension.
The Best of Broad Match Rolled into Phrase Match
Starting in two weeks, Google will start rolling out changes to phrase match and broad match modifier in Google Ads. Google is rolling the best of broad match modifier into phrase match and will be deprecating broad match thereafter.
Phrase match will be expanded to cover additional broad match modifier traffic while continuing to respect word order when it’s important to context.
Starting mid-February, both phrase match and broad match modifier keywords will start to transition to the new matching behaviour. As the behaviour will be applied to both match types you won’t have to take immediate action, however, going forward we suggest creating new keywords in phrase match.
In July, once the new behaviour is rolled out globally, you’ll no longer be able to create new broad match modifier keywords.
Google Ads Standardises Conversion Attribution Across All Video Campaigns
To help advertisers more accurately compare the impact of their video ad campaigns across formats, Google is standardising conversion attribution across all skippable in-stream and feed video formats measured through Google Ads Conversion Tracking.
This is in line with the current conversion attribution for Action focussed video formats, with Clicks and Engaged-views (10s) as default attribution events. Standardising conversion attribution allows you to compare conversion performance between two different campaign types more accurately.
Google News Showcase Launched in Australia
Google has announced the rollout of Google News Showcase in Australia. This is an initial version of the product to help benefit users and publishers in Australia focussed on leading regional and independent publishers.
Starting today, a number of Australian publishers will be paid to provide content to News Showcase. Panels on News Showcase show an enhanced view of articles and appear across Google News on Android, iOS and the mobile web, and in Discover on iOS.
Google also plans to bring News Showcase to Search and other surfaces of Google News and Discover. News Showcase builds on Google’s news licensing program launched in 2020.
Thank You for Reading
Have you noticed any changes from Google this week
Check back next Friday for the latest from Google This Week.
