It’s been a big couple of weeks at Google with the November 2021 Core Update. There are also improvements in Google Analytics 4, new features to support local news, new features for Google Ads Insights, product feeds for more video campaign types, plus Customer Match is now accessible to more advertisers.
ICYMI, here’s what happened at Google This Week.
- Google Analytics Improved Default Channel Grouping
- New Features to Support Local News
- Product Feeds for More Video Campaign Types
- 4 New Features for Google Ads Insights
- Customer Match Now Accessible to More Advertisers
- New Features Added to Google Ads Mobile App
- November 2021 Core Update
- Missing Data in Google Search Console
Google Analytics Improved Default Channel Grouping
Google Analytics 4 has made some changes to default channel groupings. There are now additional channel groupings:
- Organic Shopping
- Paid Shopping
- Organic Video
- Paid Video
- Paid Other
- Audio
- SMS
- Mobile Push Notifications
Analytics has also switched YouTube traffic to “Organic Video” or “Paid Video”, previously if Google Ads auto-tagging was enabled traffic was in Channel “Organic Social” or “Paid Social”. Paid mediums in Analytics now additionally include CPA and CPV, display mediums now include expandable and interstitial, plus tagging utm_medium=organic on a social site is now classified to channel “Organic Social” rather than “Organic Search”.
New Features to Support Local News
Google is adding new features to support local news. Searchers will soon see a carousel of local news stories when Google finds local news coverage relevant to the query. The carousel will be available globally in all languages. Google has also been working on improving its systems so authoritative local news sources appear more often alongside national publications in Search, including Top Stories.
Google has also recently launched a new way for readers to find local information by surfacing tweets by local, authoritative sources and authors, including tweets from news organisations.
Product Feeds for More Video Campaign Types
Google is evolving TrueView for shopping and scaling its best feature – product feeds – to more Video campaign types. You can now link product feeds to your awareness and consideration Video campaigns to make them shoppable. You can show browseable product imagery below your video ads to drive clicks and conversions.
4 New Features for Google Ads Insights
Google Ads has added four new features to the Insights page.
Demand forecasts (beta): See more forward-looking trends with demand forecasts. Google Ads combines machine learning technology with past seasonal search trends to get forecasts to predict emerging search interest over the next six months. The insights are personalised to your business so you’ll see trends based on the categories where you advertise.
Consumer interest insights (beta): Consumer interest insights aggregate and anonymise the top-performing search query themes that drive performance in your campaigns. You see the number of people who searched for each theme, its growth and how it performed in your account.
Audience insights (beta): Understand more about the interests and affinities of your customers, including what creative resonates with them the most.
Change history insights and auction insights (beta): You can now find both change history insights and auction insights throughout the insights page. This will help you understand how shifts in auction competition or changes you made in your account impacted performance.
The updates will launch in the coming weeks at both the campaign and account level.
Customer Match Now Accessible to More Advertisers
In June, Google announced plans to make Customer Match available to nearly all advertisers. Over the coming weeks, all policy-compliant advertisers will be able to use Customer Match. The features available will depend on specific account requirements. All policy-compliant accounts can use Customer Match and similar audiences for Customer Match to observe performance and exclude audiences from campaigns.
If you have 90 days of policy-compliant history in Google Ads and more than $50,000 lifetime spend, you can use Customer Match and similar audiences for Customer Match to observe performance, reach and engage with audiences, change the bids for your audiences and exclude audiences from your campaigns.
Plus Google Ads is making it easier to upload Customer Match lists, now you use an upload preview tool to help you see any formatting issues and apply the suggested fix directly in the interface.
New Features Added to Google Ads Mobile App
To help you stay on top of holiday demand and monitor your performance, you can now see more explanations with Performance Insights, review Search trends and create campaigns directly in the Google Ads mobile app. You’ll now be able to see explanations based on changes to your bid and budget strategies, shifts in search interest and more. There are also now Search trends in the app to help you keep up with consumer demand. You can now also create campaigns on the go, directly in the mobile app with just a few taps.
November 2021 Core Update
There was a new Google core algorithm update that started rolling out last week, dubbed the November 2021 Core Update. Semrush is reporting very high volatility with a 9.3. Of course many are not happy with the timing of this update, happening right before Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Like most rollouts, this update is expected to roll out over the coming couple of weeks.
Missing Data in Google Search Console
Google Search Console’s crawl stats report is missing data from November 19 to November 20. Google’s John Mueller confirmed the issue on Twitter, stating the team is working on a fix.
It looks like a bug on our side (it’s just a reporting issue, not related to anything else). The SC folks are working on it.
— 🧀 John 🧀 (@JohnMu) November 25, 2021
Thank You for Reading
Have you noticed any changes from Google this week?
Check back next Friday for the latest from Google This Week.
