Good morning search marketers, soak up this last Monday in August.
If you're confused by the different badging programs Google has for local businesses, you're not alone. In a breakdown of the Google Guaranteed and Google Screened programs, Greg Sterling says "there's a very close link between the Google badging programs and Local Services Ads."
Google Guaranteed debuted a few years ago as it was getting its Local Services Ads program going. It is available to a range of home services providers such as HVAC, plumbing, locksmiths and others. The businesses go through a background check process and have a license and insurance details verified. Google offers a money-back guarantee to consumers who book through the program. When you search for one of these services in your area, you'll likely see a block of Local Services ads, each with the green Google Guaranteed badge.
The newer Google Screened program is still in testing and is limited to a few sectors (financial planners and estate planning and immigration lawyers) in San Diego and Houston. These businesses must have a Google star rating of 3.0 or higher.
An interesting area to watch is how these listings are treated in Assistant. In order to appear in Google Assistant results on smartphones and Google Home devices, home services must be Google Guaranteed or screened by Google partners HomeAdvisor or Porch. Google has decoupled the Google Guaranteed badging and ad results for Google Home, in part to keep the company from running run afoul of FTC ad disclosure rules.
The AMP team has added a new component to support custom JavaScript . It is aimed at giving developers some more flexibility and the ability to incorporate interactive features on AMP pages without compromising site speed. It works by running a page's custom JavaScript in a separate Worker thread and is compatible with React, Preact, Angular, Vue.js, JQuery and D3.js frameworks. The component can also be used to share code across AMP and non-AMP pages.
Keep reading for a Pro Tip on Amazon reviews management and more.
Ginny Marvin
Editor-In-Chief