It’s been a somewhat quiet week for Google This Week as we get back to our regularly programmed schedule. But we do have some exciting news for you (for us) that the request indexing tool is finally back! There have also been some improvements to ad campaigns, including estimated list sizes of similar audiences now available in Audience Manager and new data exclusion controls for Smart Bidding.
ICYMI, here’s what happened at Google This Week.
- Changes to Combined Tab in DV360 Campaigns
- Request Indexing Tool is Back
- Estimated List Sizes of Similar Audiences Now Available in Audience Manager
- Question Hub Now Available for US Publishers
- Google My Business Insights Missing Data
- Google to Share How Publishers Can Participate in Homework Practice Problems in Search
- Google Maps Adds Transparency to Ads
- Search Console News Queries Now in Google Data Studio
- Interesting Finds in Google Search Adds Related Tags
- New Data Exclusion Controls for Smart Bidding
Changes to Combined Tab in DV360 Campaigns
Over the next few weeks, you’ll see some changes coming to the Combined tab of your campaigns in Display & Video 360. Changes include ad groups from YouTube & partners line items and updated column names for Interactions data.
The Ad groups Summary view will include ad groups from YouTube & partners line items, including basic performance metrics. Soon, the ability to update ad groups in bulk from the Combined tab will follow.
You’ll also see updated column names for Interactions data, including Clicks to Interactions, CTR to Interaction Rate and CPC to Cost per Interaction. These updates only impact the Combined tab and have no impact on the dimension names used in Reporting.
Request Indexing Tool is Back
Google has brought back the request indexing tool in Google Search Console after 69 days of it not working. The tool was disabled on October 14 and is now finally back.
Got a big backlog? If you have a large number of URLs, you should submit a sitemap instead of requesting indexing via GSC.
We’re glad to announce that ‘Request Indexing’ is back to the Google Search Console URL Inspection – just in time for the new year! ?
Read more about how to use this feature in our Help Center ? https://t.co/m1KD0do5Oi pic.twitter.com/Mh0q2ShoYa
— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) December 22, 2020
Estimated List Sizes of Similar Audiences Now Available in Audience Manager
Google has made it easier to see the estimated list sizes of your similar audiences, now in the Audience Manager in Google Ads. Previously, you could only see estimated list sizes for your similar audiences when applying them to campaigns. Now they are available directly in Audience Manager.
These estimates are currently available for Search audience lists with more than 20,000 users and for YouTube audience lists with more than 5,000 users. Google says they are “working on expanding coverage in the future.”
Question Hub Now Available for US Publishers
Google has launched Question Hub for US publishers after a few years of testing in India, Indonesia and Nigeria. It is now open for US publishers to sign up for at questionhub.withgoogle.com.
Question Hub was first launched in 2018 in regions where Google found it did not have enough content in its search index to answer queries. “Question Hub is a tool that enables creators to create rich content by leveraging unanswered questions. Question Hub collects these unanswered user questions and surfaces them to bloggers, writers, and content creators.”
Google My Business Insights Missing Data
It appears Google My Business insights is missing data from December 27th and 28th. You may be missing insights on traffic, calls and messages from Google Maps and Local. This appears to be impacting most businesses. Joy Hawkins posted a sample charge on Twitter and said she notified Google of the issue.
Every Google My Business listing I’ve checked thusfar is missing Insights from December 27-28. I just alerted Google about it. pic.twitter.com/4V6dOB7ZzC
— Joy Hawkins (@JoyanneHawkins) January 4, 2021
Google to Share How Publishers Can Participate in Homework Practice Problems in Search
Google confirmed this week with Search Engine Land that showing homework practice problems in the search results is currently an experiment but will share more details on how publishers can participate later.
Currently, the practice problems appear to come from Toppr and BYJU’S, after-school learning software companies. Google said, “we’ll share more details about how the ecosystem can participate once it is available more widely.”
Google Maps Adds Transparency to Ads
Last year Google launched new square map pin ads in Google Maps. Google is now making it clearer to users that these square pins are ads. Google has added an overlay notice that states “Square pins are ads; advertisers pay Google to promote these locations.” It includes a learn more link.
Search Console News Queries Now in Google Data Studio
Google Analytics posted on Twitter that if you are using Google Data Studio and the connection feature to Search Console, you can now bring in query data filtered by Google News sources.
“The Data Studio Search Console connector now shows you search data coming from Google News, in addition to existing data from Google Search, Image Search, and Video Search.”
Interesting Finds in Google Search Adds Related Tags
“Interesting finds” in Google search is nothing new, but now, if you click to show more results Google will expand the results by related tags or topics. You can then click on any of the related options to see more “interesting finds” in the search results.
New Data Exclusion Controls for Smart Bidding
Google has introduced new data exclusion controls for smart bidding. Smart bidding uses conversion rates to help calculate auction-time bids, however, conversion rates aren’t always accurate when experiencing tagging issues, website outages, etc.
So these issues don’t impact your smart bidding you can now exclude certain data for Search, Shopping and Display campaigns. This means your Smart Bidding uses accurate data to set the right bids.
Thank You for Reading
Have you noticed any changes from Google this week?
Check back next Friday for the latest from Google This Week.
