🔍 More Shopping ads on YouTube | Trends from Google Webmaster Conference

Nov 06, 2019

Good morning, search marketers, here's the word from Mountain View.

Barry Schwartz is back from Google HQ with a roundup of 5 SEO tips and trends from the Google Webmaster Conference. One thing that's clear is that structured data isn't going anywhere. Google will continue to use it to present information in new experiences for Search and the Assistant. In the world of fun facts, Google said it took more than a year to enable support for emojis in search. It now sees more than a million searches per day with emojis.

Merchants, get ready for more YouTube exposure for your Shopping campaigns. Kicking off in time for the holidays, Google made several announcements around Shopping yesterday. If you're opted-in, your Shopping campaigns will automatically be eligible to show on the YouTube home feed and at the top of YouTube search results. In addition, Showcase Shopping ads can now show in Image search, and the ads are expanding to categories like beauty and electronics. Lastly, TrueView for action ads will be able to show sitelinks in the coming months.

To give you both a quick view and a deep, deep dive into BERT and its implications for Search, we've published two companion pieces:

Our FAQ: All about BERT offers a high-level, handy reference.
When you are ready to really dig in, the deep dive into BERT by contributor Dawn Anderson will take you through the evolution of the algorithm and its impact on natural language understanding by machines.

Keep reading for a Soapbox on targetText and more.

Ginny Marvin
Editor-In-Chief

Soapbox

What does the future hold for targetText?

A URL fragment used by the Chrome browser – called targetText – is being tested alongside Featured Snippet URLs on desktop. When a user clicks on a snippet, the actual text is highlighted on a website's page.

We're now seeing Featured Snippet highlights on both desktop and mobile. Desktop works with targetText, whereas mobile only uses AMP. That means if a user is on mobile, and a site is not using AMP, but a Featured Snippet is triggered, then the highlighting functionality can't work. If Google sees proof that users enjoy using the highlighting feature after this testing phase, we may see them bridge the gap in some form.

Google's search engine needs complementary tech to be able to control on-site content because this only works on Chrome.

As a user, I like the highlighting feature. targetText won't help you rank higher on Google but it's certainly one to keep an eye on to see whether Google decides to expand its integration in search.

– Brodie Clark of Brodie Clark Consulting

Soapbox is a special feature for marketers in our community to share a specific tactic others can use to elevate their performance. You can submit your own here.

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Search Shorts

Microsoft Edge and JavaScript SEO

Edge browser Bing private mode. Microsoft's new browser has a new InPrivate mode that sets your Bing searches to private, says Bing.

JavaScript guides. Google has updated the JavaScript help guides to add web component details, said Google's Martin Splitt.

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