It’s been a quieter week at Google This Week but we still have plenty of exciting news to share, including verified calls by Google, new support for shopping campaigns in Google Ads Performance Planner, and more.
ICYMI, here’s what happened at Google This Week.
- Google My Business Adds Video Conferencing
- Show Your Products in Any Shopping Language, Globally
- Verified Calls by Google
- Google Launches Event Platform for Creators
- Google Ads Performance Planner Now Support Shopping Campaigns
- Highlight Health & Safety Measures with Google My Business
- New Google Initiatives in Information Quality in Search and News
- Support Multicultural Publishers in Display & Video 360
Google My Business Adds Video Conferencing
Google My Business has added a video conferencing option.
After you click to set up you can choose a service to start offering online classes from Google Meet, Webex, Skype, and Zoom.
Show Your Products in Any Shopping Language, Globally
This month, Google is expanding its feed options and capabilities, enabling merchants to show their products to people who understand a particular language regardless of their location. This will help merchants expand their reach and make it easier to use one feed to show products in multiple countries.
Verified Calls by Google
Google has announced Verified Calls which aims to solve the problem of eroding consumer trust in phone calls (a 2019 FTC report found that phone calls were the number one way people reported being contacted by scammers) by showing the caller’s name, logo, reason for calling and a Google verification symbol.
Verified Calls is a feature on Google’s Phone app, which is preloaded on many Android phones and will be available for download this week.
“We’ve been piloting Verified Calls for a few months, and the early results indicate that it improves the likelihood of someone answering a call.”
Verified Calls is initially rolling out in the U.S., Mexico, Brazil, Spain, and India, with more countries to follow shortly.
Google Launches Event Platform for Creators
Google is launching a new event platform for creators to engage with their fans. Called, Fundo, the platform provides a single end-to-end solution for virtual ticketed events and includes scheduling, sign-ups, payment processing, communication, and live streaming.
Google Ads Performance Planner Now Supports Shopping Campaigns
The performance planner tool in Google Ads has been updated to support Shopping campaigns and Smart Shopping campaigns. With the update, you can adjust budget and campaign settings to analyse performance, manage budgets across multiple accounts and campaigns, and plan for upcoming seasonal periods more effectively.
Highlight Health & Safety Measures with Google My Business
Google My Business has added attributes for certain local businesses so they can highlight COVID-19 ‘health & safety’ measures. The attributes should start appearing in Google Search and Maps soon. The attributes are intended to give consumers confidence in the business and manage expectations.
New Google Initiatives in Information Quality in Search and News
Google is investing more in information quality in Search and news.
Google has developed an Intelligence Desk to actively monitor and identify potential information threats. It is a global team of analysts monitoring news events 24/7, who collect data about how Google’s systems are responding. Google’s product teams then use the data sets and reports to run more robust quality tests to ensure systems are working as intended.
Google has also improved its detection time to identify breaking news from 40 minutes to just a few minutes. Google has also deepened its partnerships with government agencies, health organisations, and Wikipedia to ensure reliable, accurate information is available in Search and features like knowledge panels.
Google also just launched an update using BERT language understanding models to improve the matching between news stories and available fact checks and then display relevant and accurate fact checks in Full Coverage – a News feature that provides a complete picture of how a story is reported from a variety of sources.
Support Multicultural Publishers in Display & Video 360
Google is making it easier to support multicultural publishers in Display & Video 360‘s Marketplace. Soon, you’ll find auction packages with a clear indicator that they feature inventory from multicultural publishers.
The same indicators are used to discover properties in Marketplace owned by members of multicultural communities so you can easily select and add such properties to your media plans.
These changes are rolling out to users in the U.S., starting by highlighting Black-owned publishers. Google will soon be expanding to additional groups.
Thank You for Reading
Have you noticed any changes from Google this week?
Check back next Friday for the latest from Google This Week.
