It’s been an interesting week at Google This Week with a new Google Shopping Experience Scorecard, Google Ads Enhanced Conversions for Leads, Google Page Experience on Desktop and more.
ICYMI, here’s what happened at Google This Week.
- Google Merchant Center Adds Short Title Option For Smaller Ad Placements
- Topics API: The New Privacy Sandbox Proposal For Interest-Based Advertising
- Google Page Experience Update Starts Rolling Out On Desktop
- New Google Shopping Experience Scorecard
- Google AdSense Separates YouTube Earnings Into Its Own Payments Account
- Reported Latency Issues and Error Messages Within Google Ads
- Messaging Pilot In Google Merchant Center Accounts
- Google Ads Enhanced Conversions for Leads
Google Merchant Center Adds Short Title Option For Smaller Ad Placements
Google announced that online retailers can now add an optional short title to identify their products in Google Merchant Center. Google recommends limiting short titles to 65 characters or less since users typically only see the first 65 characters of a short title.
Short titles differ from the existing title attribute in that they’re intended to show in “browsy experiences,” like Discovery campaigns and Shopping ads.
Topics API: The New Privacy Sandbox Proposal For Interest-Based Advertising
Google announced an updated Privacy Sandbox proposal called ‘Topics API’ to support interest-based advertising and help businesses connect with potential customers in a more private way, replacing the Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) proposal.
Here are some ways that Topics will be more private:
- Reduces the risk of fingerprinting
- Provides more human-understandable transparency
- Continues to avoid sensitive categories
Google Page Experience Update Starts Rolling Out On Desktop
Google confirmed that the company has begun rolling out the Page Experience update for desktop web pages and desktop search and will be completed by the end of March. All page experience factors for mobile will be included with the exception of mobile-friendliness.
The same three Core Web Vitals metrics: LCP, FID, and CLS, and their associated thresholds will apply for desktop ranking.
New Google Shopping Experience Scorecard
Google is introducing a new program called “Shopping Experience Scorecard” for Google Merchant Center with its goal to reward businesses that provide excellent customer experience.
Google will reward merchants with a ranking boost, a badge and other benefits that will help consumers find merchants’ business within the Google Shopping tab in Google Search.
Google AdSense Separates YouTube Earnings Into Its Own Payments Account
Google announced Google AdSense will separate YouTube earnings into its own AdSense for YouTube homepage and payments account. This will allow YouTube creators with quicker access to their finalised YouTube earnings in AdSense.
Currently, the new homepage is only accessible to a small number of creators while it’s being rolled out in 2022. Until roll out completes, finalised YouTube earnings are still visible to YouTube creators in their AdSense payments account.
Reported Latency Issues and Error Messages Within Google Ads
Google liaison Ginny Marvin has confirmed error messages, high latency, and/or other unexpected behaviour within Google Ads.
The Ads Liaison then posted a notice on Twitter after multiple users have been complaining both on Twitter and in the forums.
Messaging Pilot In Google Merchant Center Accounts
Google is running a messaging pilot program that would enable customers to send messages to your customer service email provided in your Google Merchant Center account. Google has invited select merchants to participate in this pilot via email.
No announcement when or whether this feature will become widely available.
Google Ads Enhanced Conversions for Leads
Google Ads officially rolled out Enhanced Conversions for Leads, an alternative to the existing Google Click ID-based offline conversion tracking method. This can be configured from your Google Ads account, enabling more advertisers to track offline conversions. For those using the existing Google Click ID-based upload method, this option is still supported.
- If you currently use Google Tag Manager for conversion tracking you can set up enhanced conversions for leads with Google Tag Manager with only slight changes to your configuration.
- If you currently have conversion tracking implemented using Google’s global site tag directly on your page (not within a third-party tool or iFrame), you can set up enhanced conversions for leads with your global site tag by making slight changes to your configuration.
Thank You for Reading
Have you noticed Google’s new Shopping Experience Scorecard or any other changes from Google this week?
Check back next Friday for the latest from Google This Week.
