Welcome to ‘What Happened in Search’.
Packed full of the week’s search marketing news each Friday, this week we bring you the 2015 Search Engine Ranking Factors from Moz as well as news of Google’s new parent, Alphabet and Bing’s advertiser updates.
ALGORITHM INSIGHT
This week Moz revealed the 2015 version of its bi-annual search engine ranking factors report. Over 150 experts were surveyed, while a correlation study looked into which website features and pages appear to aid higher rankings.
According to the expert opinions, domain-level link features are the most influential broad search ranking factors, while page-level social metrics came in last.
Though the report does not provide definitive answers as to what search engines are using to rank websites, it can be used as a guide to what factors appear to have the most impact. Find all the data here.
MARKETING TO MILLENNIALS
From e-commerce to search rankings, mobile’s importance continues to rise for brands.
The demographic for which this currently rings most true is undoubtedly millennials: Almost one in three access the internet via a mobile for five hours or more per day,
They can’t be underestimated, either: Generation Y will account for one third of all retail spend by 2020.
However, when it comes to this fickle, distrusting market that relies on peer reviews for purchase decisions, how do brands break through?
GOOGLE SPLITS UP
If you managed to avoid this week’s news that Google’s founders have formed Alphabet, congratulations.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin will take the reigns at the new holding company, with Google becoming a wholly-owned subsidiary. Sundar Pichai will step out of his role as Head of Products and into that of Chief Executive. More on him here.
Alphabet, Inc. will consist of eight subsidiaries: Calico, Fiber, Google, Google Ventures, Google Capital, Google X, Life Sciences and Nest. According to Page, the move will allow him and Brin to get “more ambitious things done” and “take the long term view”.
ALIBABA GROWTH SLOWS
Alibaba, the Chinese ecommerce giant that floated in September last year, has announced that its revenue growth was at its slowest in three years.
For the last quarter, growth was at 28% and revenue was below forecast at $3.27 billion. Shares fell by more than 6%.
Alibaba has been investing across a range of industries as it continues to attempt globalisation – these include bricks-and-mortar electronics retailer Suning and a partnership with Macy’s.
The company also announced a $4 billion share repurchase program.
BILLS, BILLS, BILLS
This week Bing has announced several major updates, including billing improvements and the Bing Ads Marketplace Trends interactive website.
The billing update means one of Bing’s biggest downfalls should no longer pose a problem for advertisers, with changes to navigation and consolidation, among other things.
