Good morning, search marketers, want more recommendations?
Google wants to show them to you. Those auto-generated recommendations in the Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising UIs have come a long way in the past year. Now, it looks like Google is going to start surfacing recommendations in more places in the UI. Thanks to KoMarketing's Andrea Cruz for tipping us off to a new keywords recommendation card showing on the Keywords tab in one of her accounts. I haven't seen this myself, but it makes sense that Google would want to show suggestions on related pages in the UI.
Google Ads is still working on clearing up that reporting bug. Data through April is now correct, so you can wrap up those monthly reports, but May 1 and a few hours of May 2 have not been fixed yet.
Google hasn't said what data was wrong, and from what I've seen and heard from others, the variances don't look all that drastic. It would be hard to tell anything was wrong — which makes it all the more frustrating to me that the only place the notice shows up is in the UI at the top level of an MCC or account. The message doesn't show in the app or in Editor.
As digital marketers, it can be easy to dismiss the significance of local and the interconnection of online and offline. "Stop thinking of local as 'plumbers and restaurants,' it's really about trillions in annual consumer spending," says our own Greg Sterling. To prove the point — and provide a handy resource — he's compiled a rundown of key local stats every marketer should know.
Consumers, since the beginning, have used the internet as a tool to support offline buying. They've never ascribed to the idea of silos separating online and offline, and it's time marketers stopped.
Lots more below, including Search Shorts and a pro tip on conversational search.
Ginny Marvin
Editor-In-Chief
