Mackerel Media’s Search and Digital Marketing Roundup – August 2024
There have been quite a few notable developments in the digital space this August. One major update is that Google has rolled out its August 2024 core update. This recent update to their search algorithm aims to boost the visibility of high-quality content, whilst lowering the visibility of low value, overly SEO-heavy content. This update continues Google’s focus on improving the quality of search results by showing content that users find useful and engage with, rather than content that is written solely for search performance and ranking. (NB: If you would like to discuss how your site might have been impacted by these recent updates, you can get in touch with us at hello@mackerelmedia.co.uk.)
Google Breaks Antitrust Laws
It’s not been a great month for Google however… A federal judge has ruled that Google violated U.S. antitrust laws by maintaining a monopoly in the search and advertising markets. This ruling found that Google tried to sustain its dominance in general search services and text advertising. The outcome of this ruling could lead to future restrictions or even a breakup of Google’s search business. Whilst Google plans to appeal the decision, the success of this case could lead to further trials against Google and other major tech companies.
On the Facebook front, Meta announced that they will be introducing a new range of ad optimisation and integration options. One upcoming feature called ‘Conversion Value Rules’ will allow businesses to define higher bids for audiences they value more (or less). This means that users will no longer have to manually segment these audiences into a new, separate campaign. Meta is also planning on enabling businesses to integrate their analytics data directly into Meta. This data integration should make it easier to refine your audience targeting and gain a clearer insight on overall campaign performance.
TikTok and Amazon Team Up
It was reported this month that TikTok has partnered with Amazon, allowing users to buy products from Amazon directly within the TikTok app. Products will show real-time pricing, along with extra details such as delivery details and Prime eligibility. This move continues Amazon’s integration into social media, having now partnered with Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. This is good news for companies that already sell on Amazon as this partnership could lead to an increase in brand visibility and sales. This new integration helps to remove the extra step of a user navigating to Amazon separately, potentially improving conversion rates.
YouTube and Shopify Join Forces
Not to be outdone by the above, Youtube is also launching a new integration with Shopify, which means that creators can tag products in their YouTube videos, Shorts, and live streams. This new integration will allow viewers to order the products being featured whilst continuing to watch the video.
Finally, Instagram has announced that you can now post a carousel on the platform with up to 20 pictures or videos. Instagram previously only allowed a maximum of 10 photos or videos. This is a great new addition to their platform that will benefit brands who use carousels as part of their social media strategy.
Spring/Summer 2024 Highlights – Reflecting on the team and growth
As what has been a very busy and successful summer nears its end, I thought a little bit of reflection and celebration on the year to date would be in order.
Our Team Grows Again
2024 has been another year for team growth. In July we welcomed two new members to the paid media team: Emma Lindsay – formerly in-house at Digby Brown solicitors – alongside Mana Lacerda who joins us from world famous pizza oven company (and Mackerel alumni) Ooni. Both Emma and Mana bring huge commercial experience in managing massive paid search campaigns in the UK and internationally, and both have jumped straight into a range of active accounts.
L – R: Emma Lindsay, Mana Lacerda, Katie Harper
Earlier in the year our client services team welcomed Katie Harper, who joined as Account Executive from an in-house role and is doing an amazing job supporting clients and the internal team, and learning a huge amount about all the media we plan, buy and manage. Katie has been kind enough to share some thoughts on her 4-months at Mackerel.
Team Socials
In keeping with our tradition, the whole team gathered for our Spring and Summer Flings. Spring saw us take on the surprisingly difficult sport of axe-throwing, followed by the more sedate game of darts. Dinner and an impromptu, mind-blowing, magic show courtesy of our own Elliott were the perfect wind-down after all the exertion.
Being Edinburgh-based, our Summer Fling couldn’t miss the festival, and we got together for a filling meal, followed by a Solve-Along Murder She Wrote show.
Google Premier Partner Status
Alongside growing our paid media team, we’ve successfully retained our coveted Google Premier Partner status, which places us in the top 3% of all Google Partners in the UK, and confirms we meet Google’s stringent account optimisation, overall spend and qualified experts requirements.
Huge thanks are due to the dedication and attention to detail of the paid media team, and to Google for their support this year.
Client Campaigns & Wins
We’ve been busy with a wide range of work for both existing and new clients. On the new front, we’ve been delighted to welcome a number of D2C ecommerce brands to our roster in the shape of Snuggle Me Organic and Boba, both of which are group siblings to our very-long standing client Tutti Bambini. Owned by Heroes Technology, and focused on the baby international market, all three brands are on ambitious growth trajectories, and we’re gaga (get it?!) about working with them.
Site migrations have been a consistent theme for the SEO team, with Ski Independence, Powderbeds and Crabtree & Crabtree all launching new sites in recent weeks and months. Closer to home, we’ve been working with the expert team at Kinetic Physio to improve their organic search performance.
Our relationship with Moloco, a global pioneer in machine learning – and tech unicorn – has grown to encompass both paid and organic search. It’s an absolute joy to work with such an ambitious, thoughtful and dedicated international team.
Drum Awards Nomination
In June a couple of Mackerels travelled to the Drum EMEA Marketing Awards Ceremony in London, with our client Allica Bank and creative partner Rooster Punk. Sadly we didn’t leave with any silverware, but we did come away having spent the evening in great company, having made new friends, and are even more determined to win next year…
4 Months at Mackerel Media – The Story So Far
This week marked 4 months that I have held the position as Account Executive at Mackerel Media and my experience so far has been nothing short of incredible. Starting a new job is always a daunting prospect. However, I can honestly say that from the very beginning I have felt at home at Mackerel Media.
With a diversity of clients, every day has presented a brand new challenge. To date, I have successfully established relationships with clients through effective, consistent communication and an understanding of their varying needs, goals and challenges. Not only have I assisted in ensuring client satisfaction but this multifaceted environment has also allowed for an expansion of my own knowledge within the digital marketing field and improved my ability to adapt. I have also had the opportunity to work on several OOH campaigns and collaborate closely with media partners, which has been an invaluable experience.
Already, my role at Mackerel Media has advanced my career development tremendously. In a remarkably short period, I have gained the confidence to lead accounts, serving as the primary point of contact for numerous clients and conducting internal coordination to ensure everyone is aligned with project objectives. I can attribute this growth to the unwavering support and guidance of the team, particularly my line manager, Beth, who has been instrumental in teaching me the ways of account management.
I continue to learn everyday and I look forward to what the future holds for me at Mackerel Media.
Mackerel Media’s Search and Digital Marketing Roundup – July 2024
Things are heating up this month, especially in the realm of AI and generative search. One of the major headlines is that OpenAI have announced their long-awaited SearchGPT. Unlike traditional search engines, SearchGPT will be AI-powered and work like a conversation, directly responding to your questions and pulling in up-to-date information from the internet, complete with links to all relevant sources. Users will also be able to ask follow-up questions for greater clarity.
Google Gets VIP Pass from Reddit
It has been reported that Reddit has prohibited all search engines, except Google, from crawling and indexing their website. The recent change to their robots.txt file means that Reddit results have completely dropped out of Bing’s search index. Reddit has released a statement that this is not related to their recent $60 million licensing deal with Google, and is related to agreements about search engines scraping their content for their own AI data-sets. As users have been increasingly adding ‘Reddit’ to their searches to find first hand experiences and personal opinions, this change ensures that Google will benefit from the subsequent increase in traffic.
On the subject of AI, Google has introduced new reporting and generative AI tools to their Ad services, specifically for Performance Max campaigns. These new updates include AI-powered image editing, which allows users to create, remove and replace objects within their product images. This will make it easier for advertisers to optimise and personalise their ads. They have also added new asset-level conversion reports, making it easier for advertisers to access conversion metrics for individual assets within their Performance Max campaigns, and help determine which assets drive conversions.
Progressive Privacy Preferences
In an unexpected turn of events, Google has decided to reverse its plans to phase out third-party cookies from Chrome. Instead, they will now implement a new Chrome experience that will let users make informed choices about their privacy settings. Chrome users will now be able to set their own privacy preferences, which will apply across their web browsing activities. This new decision will have implications for the online advertising industry, especially for agencies and advertisers who have been preparing for a cookie-less future. Who hasn’t seen “Please explain your approach to the phasing out of third-party cookies” in an RFP over the last few years?
Google Becomes a Multilingual Genius
Google has also announced that they have increased their translated search results from 13 to 21 languages. This means that many websites will now be able to reach a global audience. Google will translate the title link and snippet of a search result for results which are not in the users native language. This new expansion means that websites will hopefully now see an increase in search visibility, traffic and potential increase in overall engagement with their brand.
Mackerel Media’s Search and Digital Marketing Roundup – June 2024
Maybe it’s the Summer weather, but June has been quite a calm month in the world of SEO. However, there have been a few notable updates which may have an impact on your digital marketing efforts.
Google Joins the Phone Age with Mobile-First Indexing
At the start of the month, Google embarked on the last stages of their migration to mobile-first indexing. This means that after July 5th, all sites will be crawled using the Googlebot Smartphone crawler, and their desktop Googlebot will get to enjoy a much needed retirement. This highlights the importance of having a website that is optimised for mobile performance and useability, else your search performance could be impacted.
To coincide with any upcoming Summer sales, Google released an update to their return policy structured data, which now allows search results to display an organisation’s return policy. This information will be shown in the brand panel that displays when a user searches for a specific brand. This new update means that you can specify a general return policy for your business rather than defining one for each individual product, thus reducing the amount of product structured data markup required.
On the 20th of June, Google released their latest June 2024 spam update. The last spam update was back in March, and this latest update will help lower the amount of low quality sites we see on search results, and even remove some spam sites completely from search.
No More Endless Scrolling!
In an unexpected turn of events, Google has decided to discontinue continuous scroll in search results. This change will be rolled out across desktop searches initially, and continuous scroll will be removed from the mobile results in the upcoming months. Search results will now display “Next” at the bottom of the page on desktop search and a “More results” button will show on mobile search.
Continuous scroll was first rolled out across mobile search back in October 2021, and Google has stated that reverting back to the classic pagination style allows them to serve search results faster. Google has also said that continuous scroll didn’t lead to a higher overall user satisfaction.
However, this change could bring potential challenges – as now websites that rank on page two may start to see fewer clicks and less impressions since the user has to manually navigate to see them.
LinkedIn Attempts to Boost Engagement
On the social and networking side, LinkedIn has introduced several new newsletter tools to make it easier for creators to grow their audience and engage with their followers. These new tools allow users to design more visually appealing content and interact with your audience. You can now design covers (with the help of AI) and link to other LinkedIn profiles and pages directly so that users can learn more about anyone mentioned. They have also updated how their newsletter email alerts and in-app messages are sent to help improve engagement.
For those of us who struggle to stay updated with the latest LinkedIn posts and developments, these newsletters are a great way to stay informed without the need to scroll endlessly through our feed.
Mackerel Media’s Search and Digital Marketing Roundup – May 2024
It’s not just the weather that’s been warming up this May. There have been some exciting developments in the world of SEO and digital marketing, including advancements in AI search and major revelations from recent Google API leaks.
Google Gets Creative with AI
One of the latest developments is that Google is incorporating generative AI in their search results. This new search enhancement uses Google’s Gemini AI model to generate an overview answer to a user’s search query, based on information from multiple sources. Users can adjust the level of detail that the AI provides, and Google plans to introduce new AI generated categories such as dining and food recipes, holiday plans, book recommendations and more.
However, that is not to say there hasn’t been some teething problems, and some concerns have been raised about the validity of the suggestions generated by AI in search. One concern is that AI generated overviews could lead to a decrease in website click-through rates. However, Google CEO Sundar Pichai has claimed that there has been an increase in click-through rates on results with AI overviews than without.
The AI overview has also led to incorrect information being generated such as adding glue to pizza sauce to keep cheese from sliding off the crust which was cited from an old Reddit post. Google AI also suggested that eating at least one small rock a day is recommended, as they used the satire site TheOnion as a source of factual information.
Considering that both Google and OpenAI have signed deals with Reddit to use their data to train their AI models, we are sure to see much more diverse and incorrect information being served to users until their system is more refined.
(June 1st Update: It is now being reported that Google has since rolled back its AI search feature due to concerns over inaccurate and unreliable AI-generated overviews. Google has stated that whilst they are making adjustments to improve the AI overviews, they have no intention of removing this feature in the future.)
Google Search’s Secrets Exposed
May also brought one of the biggest SEO shake-ups of the last few years. An anonymous source (later identified as Erfan Azimi) shared thousands of leaked Google API documents with Rand Fishkin, one of the most well-known SEO experts and former CEO and co-founder of Moz. This leaked source, which Google subsequently acknowledged as authentic, contained the many ways that Google collects and uses data in its search ranking algorithms.
Some of the key revelations from this leaked report was that Google tracks Chrome browser activity and user behaviour to determine the most popular and important URLs on a site. This conflicts with what they have said in the past that they likely don’t use Chrome data for ranking.
Mike King, who was one of the first people to really explore these leaks in depth, stated that ultimately it is important to keep building content that users want to visit, engage with, click on and want to link to.
On a lighter note, sometimes we just want to search the internet without all the extra bells and whistles. Fortunately, on the 14th of May, Google introduced a new ‘web’ search option, which only displays text-based links in search results.
This option filters out any AI suggestions and other visual mediums such as videos, images, local business listings, shopping products, knowledge panels, featured snippets and top-stories. Currently, this option is only visible if you click ‘More’ first, and then choose ‘Web’, or by scrolling right on Mobile search.
Whilst there is hope that this change will improve the quality of results and overall SERP visibility, the extra step of selecting the ‘Web’ option may be a detriment to how often it is actually used.