Good morning search marketers, happy Friday!
If you're still hanging on to accelerated ad delivery in your Google Ads campaigns, it'll be sticking around just a bit longer. Originally scheduled to sunset by October 1, Google now says accelerated ad delivery will phase out starting October 7. Blame the delay on summer vacations, the dog that ate the PM's roadmap, or just bask in one more week of rebelling against the algorithms if you want to hold out.
There does seem to be a disconnect between what Google saw as the goal of accelerated delivery and how many advertisers used it. Google saw it as a tool to spend budget as early in the day as possible, while most advertisers I've heard talk about it used it as a tool to ensure maximum impression coverage throughout the day. (All agreed was not a good solution if your budgets are restricted. But clearly, Google saw a lot of restricted budget campaigns using accelerated delivery.) Starting October 7, Google's bidding systems will determine the optimal times to serve your ads throughout the day.
Google's Gary Illyes added a bit more color to the unfollow update. Meta robots nofollow is also treated as a hint just like rel="nofolllow", but there is no meta robots ugc or sponsored.
Yelp came out with a publishing tool called Yelp Connect yesterday. Greg Sterling compares Connect to Google Posts in that restaurants can use it from their Yelp pages to push out content such as menu updates. The posts can be scheduled and appear on the home screens of Yelp app users. A weekly email program is also in the works. Connect will cost restaurants $199 per month after an initial $99/month promotion ends.
Lastly, Google has updated its algorithms to give higher priority to original reporting in search results. Original reporting will not only rank better in Google Search but soon will also rank better in Google News, including Discover. The stories will also stay at the top of the news cluster for a longer period of time, Richard Gingras, the Vice President of Google News, told us. You may recall the most recent update to Google's search quality raters guidelines included specific items around original reporting. The algorithm updates rolled out over the past few months and Google said it continues to refine them.
Read on for your daily Pro Tip, Search Shorts and more.
Ginny Marvin
Editor-In-Chief
