Good morning search marketers, let's hear it for faster page loading.
You may be familiar with parallel tracking already, Google Ads rolled out parallel tracking for search (last fall) and display ads (in May). Now, Microsoft Advertising said Monday it's getting ready to roll parallel tracking out of beta to all advertisers soon. The process that allows users to go straight to a landing page after clicking an ad without having to wait for click measurement redirects to process. Users are more likely to stick around when a page loads quickly, particularly on mobile, and that's good news for advertisers. Microsoft Advertising is also introducing a Fixed URL suffix field and more custom parameter fields for URL tracking at multiple levels of your accounts.
Yelp introduced several new paid tools for business owners to have more control over how their listings appear on the platform. Among the updates, businesses in certain states and verticals can apply for a Verified License badge, which costs $1 per day. Google and Yelp are both enabling more customization for business owners. Last week, we reported, Google added more branding tools and @shortnames to Google My Business.
Google said Monday it has deprecated social profile markup for knowledge panels. What's that mean? Well, Google suggests you claim your business' knowledge panel through Google search and we suggest you watch your knowledge panels for any changes to any profiles you manage. And lastly, if you're a WordPress user, the latest Yoast SEO WordPress plugin update includes a better mobile listing preview.
More to read below, including a Pro Tip on why we should all be learning JavaScript and more.
Ginny Marvin
Editor-In-Chief