SEO Wash-up Monday 4th January

Google Updates

Google adSense vignette ads are now supported on wider screens – Google have announced that vignette ads now support a larger range of screen sizes. So, for websites that have vignettes turned on, the vignette ads will soon start to appear on wider screens such as desktops.

Google mentioned that the experiments displaying vignette ads on wider screens have performed very well, this is why they have fully launched it for wider screens. Furthermore, they mention that if users do not want to show vignettes on desktop, then they can switch this option off by using the new ‘wide screen’ control in their auto ads settings.

Google has added shopping features for advertisers & searchers – The search giant added multiple features to their Google ads and Shopping ads just before the holiday shopping season. New features such as price tracking, price comparison and others that relate to shopping, in order to getting the best price on what they want to buy.

For advertisers they have added features to highlight promotions, sales and insights. So on the advertiser front, they are enabling promotions to all U.S. retailers and that will be easier to use for the holidays. These promotions will also show in more areas including free listings and ads in the Shopping tab, Google Images for mobile only and local inventory ads on search.

They will also show new insights, performance reports, in the Google Ads editor. This will give users auction insights like impression and outranking share to show how they’re performing in specific product categories compared to others.

Google tests different coloured bubble headers display in search – As you may know, the search giant shows users coloured header backgrounds in search for some queries. Now, it seems that they are testing a different interface for that where the header is a white background but instead Google uses buttons in bubble format that are coloured

Google ads activates real time alerts feature & More – They have added a few new features that includes real time alerts, improvements to draft campaigns and easier access to make new campaigns as well as viewing disapproved ads.

• Real time alerts – This is the most exciting feature, as users can now configure to receive real-time alerts from Google Ads. The also mention that if your campaign has any critical issues, then you’ll now receive an alert while setting it up. These are issues that could prevent your campaign from serving or running at its full potential, such as an invalid URL or location overlap. So if there is some conflict or issue, Google will notify you of that.
• Draft campaigns – With this new feature, Google says that the draft campaigns will now save your progress automatically, which makes it easier to pick up where you left off. An example is when you are building a campaign and need additional input on your budget, users can save it as a draft campaign and circle back with their team. Once the budget is approved, users can then resume the work and publish the campaign. You can return to the draft campaign by visiting the campaign page or find it on the overview page.
• Creating campaigns & viewing disapproved Ads – They have improved the process of creating new campaigns from the overview page in order to help build campaigns quicker. Once users have finish creating their campaign, they can then see if the ad has been disapproved on the overview page. This can help you understand why the ad was disapproved, appeal the decision, and edit the ad directly. These updates are currently available for Search campaigns and will expand to other campaign types in the coming months.