Good morning, search marketers, is the glitch fixed?
Numerous SEOs and webmasters reported large numbers of pages being de-indexed from Google late last week. On Saturday, Google's John Mueller said that it had fixed a "technical issue" and everything should be back to normal, though some continue to report seeing deindexing issues. Don't expect further detail on the glitch; Google's not saying. Are you seeing this issue? Let us know: editors@searchengineland.com.
On the Assistant front, Rich Answers are coming to Google Assistant on Android devices. Google appears to be trying to harmonize Assistant and mobile search results, writes Greg Sterling. Snippets, onebox, knowledge panel and direct answers will all begin to surface from Assistant, which is now on more than a billion devices.
Paid search may be losing some luster among small businesses. A new poll pegs paid search near the bottom of a list of 2019 marketing priorities. Paid social and website/landing pages topped the list — and even traditional print slightly outranked paid search among small, local businesses. Paid search may be struggling because of the complexity of self-service campaign management, the report said. That's something Google has been trying to address with initiatives like the new Google Ads interface and campaign types that are nearly completely automated. (To the chagrin of many more sophisticated advertisers.)
Lots more below including a Pro Tip on tracking engaged users in Google Tag Manager and more.
Ginny Marvin
Editor-In-Chief
Quick links to stories mentioned above:
+ Google: De-indexing problem now fixed, result of 'technical issue'
+ 'Rich Answers' coming to Google Assistant
+ Paid social, even print, tops SEM as marketing priorities for SMBs, survey finds
