Good morning search marketers, are you feeling free this Independence Day?
There's nothing like a holiday smack-dab in the middle of the workweek right when you need it most. It's a break from prepping for a vacation or catching up after one, from covering for a coworker who's away on their own holiday, and from the lazy days of summer that are often anything but. Since you're checking your email anyway, we're going to take this opportunity to catch you up on the important search content you may have missed, now that you have a moment to soak it in.
If you were out of the office last month, it's time to get up to speed on two algorithm updates from Google: the June 2019 core search algorithm update and the site diversity change. The latter was aimed at increasing the diversity of domains in the search results so that the first page won't be dominated by a lot of pages from the same domain. "This site diversity change means that you usually won't see more than two listings from the same site in our top results," the company said of the update. This could be good news for the smaller guys, but it remains to be seen what effects it will have on those (formerly) dominant domains.
The search diversity update was unrelated, however, to the pre-announced June core search update that began rolling out last month. Data providers' early assessments of the June core search update: it affects a wide swath of domains, with the health and finance sectors perhaps being affected most. Stay tuned as things continue to shake out.
On the SEM side, the industry is still absorbing all the new formats and changes announced at Google Marketing Live — native Discovery ad campaigns, new Maps inventory, giant mobile Gallery ads, etc. At a time when marketers' minds are turning toward the lucrative holiday season (not to mention Prime Day next week which is actually two days long), platforms seem determined to roll out new goodies so we have plenty of time to experiment and test.
Now that you're caught up, enjoy the rest of your Fourth of July and we'll be back with our full array of features on Friday!
Pamela Parker,
Senior Editor, Projects Manager, Content Studio
