Welcome to ‘What Happened in Search’.
Packed full of the week’s digital search news each Friday, this week’s edition features Google’s trash can, mobile search descriptions and gender customised search.
GOOGLE ANALYTICS ROLLS OUT “TRASH CAN”
Google Analytics has announced a new “Trash Can” feature that will help users reclaim any views, properties or accounts that have been deleted in the last 35 days.
Google says the new feature will be rolling out over the next few weeks, but any data that is deleted starting today can be recovered once an account has been updated with the new feature.
APPLE PAY BEGINS TO BOOM
Since its introduction in October, Apple Pay has accounted for two of every three dollars spent through contactless payments on Visa, Mastercard and American Express.
“Apple Pay is off to a very strong start”, said CEO Tim Cook, adding that he expects 2015 to be “the year of Apple Pay”.
Around 750 banks and credit unions have signed on to accept Apple Pay, and according to numbers shared by Cook, Apple Pay was responsible for 80 percent of mobile payments at Panera Bread, while mobile payments increased by 400 percent at Whole Foods.
GOOGLE MOBILE SEARCH DESCRIPTIONS
This week, Google’s Zineb Ait Bahajji announced that mobile search results snippets will now show a message to searchers when Google is unable to display the snippet, because the webmaster is blocking its crawlers.
Back in August 2012, Google added this feature to desktop search, so that where a webmaster blocked GoogleBot and Google would show that URL in the search results, Google would display a message as to why they were unable to show a full search results snippet.
Now, Google is bringing this feature to mobile search results, even when the desktop version is fully crawlable, but the mobile version is blocking the search engine. For example, a search on [deals] in Google results in the desktop version showing the full snippet, but the mobile version with a blocked snippet. The message Google shows reads “A description for this result is not available because of this site’s robots.txt – learn more.”
PINTEREST TO OPEN UP USER DATA
Pinterest has unveiled plans to unpack more of its user data to help advertisers produce more targeted ads. The firm’s head of operations said it would “focus on intent data” that would indicate what its users wanted to buy, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Pinterest currently offers ad products based on limited types of information, such as gender and location. One analyst said the firm would struggle to increase revenues unless it facilitated more targeted advertising.
“Pinterest’s marketing value lies more in the future than in the present,” wrote Nate Elliott of Forrester Research. He added that the network’s users tended to post things that they were interested in purchasing, which is valuable information to advertisers.
PINTEREST SEARCH CUSTOMIZED BY GENDER
In a bid to attract more men to its social bookmarking network, Pinterest has adjusted its Guided Search system to serve results that differ depending on whether the user is female or male.
The change is part of efforts by Pinterest to attract more men to its network (according to comScore, 71% of Pinterest’s 72.5 million users in December were women).
WEEKLY VIDEO
Universal SEO Strategy Audit in 5 Steps
When it comes to building an SEO strategy, many marketers (especially those who don’t spend a significant amount of time with SEO) start off by asking a few key questions. That’s a good start, but only if you’re asking the right questions.
