Digital Marketing Industry Updates: April 2023

Paid Media Updates

Google search ads can now include logo and business name

The addition of logos and business names helps give advertisers more visibility with more real estate on the search engine results page (SERP) and better differentiation from organic search results. We’re seeing the addition of logos and business names improve ad rank and increase CTR. 

Google Discovery ads adjustments aimed at increasing engagement

Ninety one percent of users took action after discovering something new on channels such as Discover, YouTube, and Gmail, according to Google. And with more than half of consumers using multiple touchpoints before making an online purchase, Google is adding new features to Discovery ads to offer advertisers more options, including the ability to use product feeds, product-level reporting with data-driven attribution, and the ability to run conversion lift experiments. Google Discovery ads are a good top-of-funnel placement that supports brand exposure, and with these new features, even specific product visibility. Google’s development in this area reflects their desire to reach consumers outside of search and support more visual ads that encourage user engagement.

SEO Updates

March 2023 broad core update completed its rollout

Google rolled out its March 2023 Broad Core Update from March 15th to March 28th. While it’s too early to determine what type of sites and pages were influenced the most by this rollout, core updates to algorithms are historically significant in fluctuating keyword rankings.

We recommend reviewing all websites’ impressions and rankings to determine how much impact the March 2023 Broad Core Update had on their performance. (Branch Explorer is an ideal way to view historical ranking data for all your keywords.) This is also an opportune time to conduct competitor keyword research to see if other websites in the same industries have been impacted at a wide scale. 

Google is launching more ways to verify information on SERPs

Google has launched additional ways to verify information on search results, including launching:

• About This Result
• Perspectives
• About This Author

About This Result was originally launched in 2021, but has now been globally rolled out to all languages:

This section allows users to get additional context such as how the content of the page was sourced.

Perspectives are a new SERP feature that showcases what experts of the searched query have to say about that given topic:

Google is becoming increasingly transparent about providing contextual information about the content and author of webpages on search results. Making sure that information on a website is written from a place of expertise, has reliable sources, and has information about the author of the content piece should continue to be standard practice for all sites.

The new Bing is getting used

The New Bing was launched February 7th, and now incorporates features like Microsoft’s AI chat features. As of March 22nd, Bing had a 15.4% week-over-week increase in page visits, versus Google’s 2.8% decrease.

While the search engine market share still overwhelmingly belongs to Google, other information curators such as ChatGPT and Bing are steadily increasing in popularity. 

Google is the standard when reporting on organic KPIs, but ensuring that rankings and impressions from Bing sources remain strong is beneficial to making sure the site is performing well as a whole. When looking at organic sources in reporting, review Bing referrals in particular to see if any of their latest changes have impacted traffic.

Analytics

Resources to start using GA4

Even a few of us seasoned users of Google Analytics are dragging our feet in getting comfortable using GA4 for day-to-day reporting and analysis. If you’re ready to dig in, our Head of Analytics Nico Brooks has four get-acquainted videos that will point you in the right direction. 

• The event model in GA4 is the foundation for tracking more than in Universal Analytics–one of the many benefits of which is more accurate measurement of engagement in GA4.
• Learn the key differences between GA4 & Universal Analytics.
• Get oriented on how to navigate the GA4 interface.
• How to get the most out of GA4 reports.

Universal Analytics data isn’t gone forever

While we wait to see how Google will handle the complete sunset of Universal Analytics, some of our clients have wondered what will happen to all that data. For some period of time, we expect it will be available through your current login. For businesses that want to preserve the data long-term, archiving the data into Big Query is a possibility we’re exploring. Let us know if you’re interested.