Welcome to ‘What Happened in Search’.
Packed full of the week’s digital search news each Friday, this week’s topics are confirmation of the EU’s charges against Google, Facebook CTR report for Q1 and the Yahoo-Bing deal.
BREAKING: EU CONFIRMS GOOGLE CHARGES
The European Union has accused Google of illegally abusing its dominant position in online search.
Full story here.
Q1 REPORT: FACEBOOK CTR
Facebook advertisers reached more customers per ad and paid less for each click in the first quarter of 2015, according to a report released this week.
According to the report, customers saw CTRs rise 17% over Q4 of 2014 and 260% over this time last year. In the ecommerce vertical, CTR increased 12% QoQ and 281% YoY.
SMARTPHONE PENETRATION
Last week comScore released its latest US smartphone market-share data. It asserts that 76.6 percent of the US mobile subscriber population now owns a smartphone, meaning penetration could reach 80 percent or beyond by year end.
The data also shows Samsung losing market share vs. November 2014 and LG gaining.
BING’S MOBILE REVAMP
Bing has announced that its mobile homepage has been revamped across iPhone and Android devices, calling it a “significant redesign”.
Users can now swipe up and down on the interface and unlock the ability to see the homepage image details, the “popular now” topics and access Bing accounts, rewards summary and much more.
NEED TO KNOW: MOBILEGEDDON
With Google’s mobile algorithm being unleashed on the world on April 21st, we’re learning more about what will and will not be affected.
Not every aspect of mobile search results will be affected by Google’s mobile algorithm – its focus is, in fact, relatively narrow compared to other Google algorithms.
Confirmed on Twitter by Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Gary Illyes, only organic mobile search listings, aka the “10 blue links”, will be affected.
NEW DEAL FOR YAHOO & BING
This morning Yahoo and Microsoft announced an amended search relationship. While it keeps the basic framework of the original deal in place it gives both companies, most notably Yahoo, more autonomy.
Under the old deal, Yahoo had to carry Microsoft’s Bing’ ads on desktop. On mobile, Yahoo had flexibility to sell as it likes. Now Yahoo has more flexibility on desktop. Under the new deal, 51% of its desktop search traffic has to carry Bing ads.
