What Google At Peak Search Means for Marketers

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For Q3 2023 earnings, Google reported a shortfall on cloud revenue and that their US core advertising / search business over delivered to make up part of the difference. So how has Google become this dependent on non-advertising revenue streams to achieve future growth targets and how much longer can they go back to the […]

Search Fails May Cost Retailers as Much as $13.8B in Sales This Holiday Season

Search Fails May Cost Retailers as Much as $13.8B in Sales This Holiday Season

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MULO (multi-location) retailers struggle to compete with Amazon, the online giant.  But they are never going to win that battle if they don’t focus on search for the holiday season. A new study by Nosto reveals that as much as $13.8B in sales may be lost on Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) because when consumers […]

From Google to Social to Generative AI: The Evolution of Search Journeys

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Remember when search ads were just a bunch of blue links? Believe it or not, that wasn’t that long ago – when a mention of search conjured a near-identical image in everyone’s minds. If you asked 100 people to describe their search journeys today, you might get 100 different answers. Those answers would almost certainly […]

Social Media May Be Winning the Search Engine Wars

Social Media May Be Winning the Search Engine Wars

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As the search engine wars heat up and Microsoft prepares to unveil a new Bing powered by ChatGPT technology, a substantive competitor has entered the arena — social media. According to a new report, 82% of consumers prefer to search on social media over traditional search engines, and two in five would rather use TikTok than Google or Bing.

Apple’s Search Ad Business Triples in Market Share

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AppsFlyer reports in its latest mobile advertising Performance Index that Apple Search Ads tripled in market share since 1H 2020. During the same period, other search ad competitors’ market share declined, the most consequential (read: billions in revenue) being Google and Meta.

TV Advertising Versus Social and Search

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TV ads are delivered to consumers in a clutter-free environment, where the consumer is usually in a “leaned back,” focused state of being. TV ads are often delivered via 60″+ TV screens with full surround-sound audio, creating an immersive “sight, sound, motion” impact like no other medium. Of course TV drives better recall! And if TV ads drive better recall, basic logic would conclude that TV ads also drive better consumer response.

Google’s Latest Privacy Play Has Big Implications for the Open Web

Broadening Local: Expert Roundup

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A trio of local search experts expound on the latest in the industry. Claire Carlile proposes Google My Business as a CMS and covers how businesses should approach the channel; Miriam Ellis explores the increasingly blurred lines between different categories of sites and businesses; and Damian Rollison delineates the major trends shaping the trajectory of local search, especially on Google.

Hey, Siri! 7 Copywriting Techniques To Optimize for Voice Search

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There are almost 40 million voice-first devices in homes across the US. That’s a whole lot of families asking Siri, Cortana, and Google questions. We’ve broken down a list of seven copywriting techniques to optimize your content and/or copywriting for voice search.

Using Business Insights to Complement Automation and Optimize Search Strategy

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With automation leveling the playing field, marketers need to find new ways to use their proprietary business intelligence to keep an edge over their competitors in search. Marketers can add immense value to automation, maximizing its ability to drive strong performance.

Three Key Shifts the Tech Space Will See in 2021

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What we will see with voice is a gradual-but-growing diversification of product discovery beyond websites and mobile apps. And voice will increasingly be a part of the mix.

Voice Growth Will Further Amazon and Google’s E-Commerce Dominance

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For most people, e-commerce starts with a Google or Amazon search on our computer or phone. We read reviews, compare prices, and analyze how something will look or fit in our lives. We don’t know where we will end up, but we browse options from our favorite retailers until we find exactly what we are looking for. 

What happens when we stop using visual cues and start searching with our voice? And what happens when the results that our voice triggers are controlled by the device interpreting those questions or commands? 

Search Marketers Cater to New Customer Needs for Holidays

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Grocery stores are doing more business than pre-pandemic, with average weekly household grocery bills surging from $120 to $161 at the height of statewide lockdowns this spring. Many restaurants are pivoting right now to promote their takeout and delivery options. Health and wellness websites are fielding questions about coronavirus, as are many news publishers.

Leaning into the changes means understanding and responding to the challenges consumers are facing right now and setting up a search strategy that focuses on providing the best experiences possible.

Street Fight’s November Theme: Google’s World

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Google’s World is shorthand for the fully fleshed-out concept: “It’s Google’s world… we’re all just living in it.” The main thrust is that Google’s search dominance gives it enormous control in impacting the fate of businesses everywhere who rely on search for traffic and customer acquisition.

Google’s ongoing updates to the search algorithm, ranking factors, and SERPs continue to have ripple effects on marketers everywhere. It’s becoming more challenging to follow the moving target of SEO effectiveness. This game has its own set of rules when it comes to local search.

Google’s Latest Privacy Play Has Big Implications for the Open Web

Marketers, Don’t Stress About Zero-Click Search Just Yet

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Did you know that over 50% of Google searches performed do not result in a click? Did you know that Google is continuing to expand the number of queries to which they are applying zero-click SERP features?

Did you know that it’s not something that you should be too worried about yet? 

“Wait… But it’s taking away search opportunities from my website!” 

That depends on how you are defining search opportunities, so let’s jump to it. 

Brandify Study Shows Consumer Search Preferences for Healthcare, Restaurants, and Retail

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Google in particular has made significant moves in recent months to verticalize the consumer search experience. For example, the team responsible for the relatively new Google Travel and Google Hotels sites has reported that they built a new consumer experience for hotels specifically because they noted important differences in the ways consumers searched in that category. 

Brandify’s study illustrates that consumer preferences for additional verticals are similarly differentiated, both in the channels consumers prefer for each vertical and the sorts of information they seek out when searching. Already, the search experience for restaurants, retail stores, and healthcare providers varies by vertical, especially on Google, which has added prominent vertical-specific attributes as a result of Covid-19 such as dine-in, takeout, and pickup availability for restaurants.

What Search Behavior During Covid-19 Means for Healthcare Marketers

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The headlines are everywhere. Open any newspaper, and you’ll see story after story about coronavirus and its impact on American society. But new data on consumer search behavior shows Covid-19 isn’t the only healthcare topic on people’s minds right now.

In an analysis of consumer search trends during the coronavirus pandemic, a team from the healthcare provider scheduling and search platform Kyruus found that search terms seemingly unrelated to Covid-19, such as “diabetes,” “cancer,” and “depression,” continue to rank more highly than those associated with the virus.

SEO Trends for 2020 That You Need to Know

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In 2020, we can only expect the competition for the attention of Internet audiences to become even more intense. More and more businesses appear each day, all raring to get to the top of the search results.

Add to that the fact that search engines, Google in particular, will continue to make changes to their algorithms in the coming year. SEOs must be on their toes to stay on top of the latest SEO trends. Here are some of the changes, which include the further ascendance of video, voice, and mobile as well as premiums on longer content and possible openings for non-Google search engines.

Report: Reviews for Local Businesses Are Essential. Ratings Below 4 Stars Are Deadly

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If it had not already been clear that building up a significant inventory of positive online reviews is key to attracting new customers to a business, let doubt linger no further. 

A whopping 52 percent of consumers ages 18-54 “always” read reviews when searching for local businesses, and only 53 percent will consider a businesses with fewer than four stars, according to survey of 1,005 US-based consumers by marketing platform BrightLocal. Eighty-two percent of consumers overall read online reviews.

Google’s Fitbit Purchase: Peek into Next-Level Local Dominance and Healthcare Hacking

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Prescriptions by Google, then? The company indeed lacks Amazon’s delivery capabilities but has a stranglehold on search and therefore on consumers’ connections to local businesses. It is not hard to imagine a world in which Google appears to keep its privacy promise by refusing to sell ads directly based on Fitbit user data but still capitalizes on the data by using it to connect Fitbit users with local health care service providers, pharmacists, and even gyms. That would just constitute one more way Google is edging out the digital middlemen that once closed the loop from Google search to a local service provider.

Now More than Ever, Local Strategy Differs by Vertical

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The putative benefits of competing in vertically oriented channels come at a greater cost than was the case when GMB provided a unitary platform for all industries. Simply put, Google is serving the specialized needs of price-conscious travelers or those who want greater assurances when hiring a service professional, and in so doing, the company is creating additional channels to generate revenue through ads. More and more businesses will have to get used to spending their way toward greater exposure to their desired audiences — which is only odd in light of the fact that so much of local marketing has historically been organic in nature.