Welcome back to ‘What Happened in Search’, this week we have plenty of news and insight in the world of PPC, SEO, Display, Social and Design
INTERACTIVE MOBILE APP ADS
Someone’s downloaded your app, great. Now how many people will actually use the app? Apparently one in every four downloaded apps will never get used. So of course Google want to do something about this by introducing two new types of mobile app advertisement. They hope that this will increase the level of intent before a user downloads an app in the hope to increase app usage.
FOUR ADS IN SERPS
Google have started testing four paid advertisements above the organic results in the SERPs. This is potentially good news for PPC with more space to battle it out for paid placements… not so much for SEO as this will ultimately lead to a lower organic CTR!
FACEBOOK MOVING PICTURES
If you’re on Facebook you can’t have missed the stream of moving GIFs that now populate your newsfeed. Well now Facebook have gone one step further, introducing the ability to upload GIFs/short videos as your profile picture to “show your personality”. There are also other personalisation improvements such as time limited profile pictures. At addmustard we have found GIFs to be very successful on Facebook adverts, with one post for a client seeing a CTR of 4.6%!
PENGUIN MARCH DELAYED
Google has announced that the new penguin algorithm update will not be happening until 2016. A Google spokesperson simply claimed “With the holidays upon us, it looks like the penguins won’t march until next year”. Phew, happy holidays!
GOOGLE+ NO MORE LOCAL
In a major update to Google+, Google has removed all local business info from Google+. Is it the end-of-the line for Google+ Local or just another reformat?
13 UX STATS
We certainly are impressed with these 13 statistics on how to improve your web/mobile site’s user experience. Here’s a little sneak peak – “88% of online consumers are less likely to return to a site after a bad experience”. Are you taking notes?
SEO BATTLEGROUND
With news of Google’s Phantom 3 algorithm update breaking at the end of last month, this week’s Battleground looks at some of the immediate winners and losers.
CLUB TWITTER
Twitter wants to start making money off the 500 million people that see tweets but don’t actively sign in, including people that see embedded tweets. We enjoyed this quote from Mashable “Twitter is like a large, sweaty, thumping nightclub that seems like it’s where all the action is, but outside of a group of die-hards, no one else actively goes there”.
GOOD WEEK FOR UBER…
The taxi giant Uber has announced its latest innovation – a bus! Read more.
BAD WEEK FOR WIKIPEDIA…
The notorious Chinese GFW (Great Firewall) has blocked the Chinese & English version of Wikipedia.
TOP TIP
You can use @gmail.com and @googlemail.com interchangeably. Perfect for signing up to a website twice without setting up two accounts.
