🔍 Key takeaways from Google's (including YouTube!) latest ad numbers

Feb 05, 2020

Good morning search marketers, can you guess YouTube's share of Google ad revenue?

Google is finally shedding a bit of light into YouTube advertising — the added disclosure in the company's Q4 2019 earning report comes two months into Sundar Pichai's ascension to the Alphabet CEO role. We now know YouTube generated $15 billion in ad revenues last year. It's growing faster than the other advertising segments, but still accounts for the smallest revenue share.

A quick calculation shows YouTube contributed 11% of Google's annual ad revenues last year. Search and other properties including Maps, Gmail, etc. still generate the overwhelming bulk of ad revenue at 73% share, while Google Network (GDN etc.) comes in second with 16% share.

Among the other takeaways, we learned that participation in Google Shopping Actions has increased by 4X among merchants in the U.S.

Meanwhile, the fallout from the shuttering of data collection and reporting firm Jumpshot continues. Hitwise has notified customers that it has halted some reporting services that relied on Jumpshot clickstream data.

Read on for your daily Search Shorts — congrats to our friends at Brainlabs and Distilled on their merger — and more.

Ginny Marvin,
Editor-in-Chief

Pro Tip

Here's why content audits are so important

"If it's been a while since older posts on your site have been updated, it may be time to conduct a content audit," explains Justine Rabideau of HawkSEM. "Content revitalization should never be a one-and-done process. Here's how you need to review your content:"

Create a list of all URLs into a spreadsheet.
Use Google Analytics to determine how much traffic comes to your site. Also, check how many backlinks each post has.
Identify pages with "thin content."
Identify posts with duplicate or similar topics, then determine if they should be combined into one longer authoritative post or if one should be removed completely.
Identify posts with outdated content.
Don't forget to redirect posts removed from the site to avoid 404 errors.
Repeat this process on a regular basis (annual or bi-annual) to keep your content relevant.

Learn more »

How to Choose the Right SEO Vendor

When selecting an SEO vendor, it's important to look under the hood and see what a company is really doing when optimizing a website and how they can support your company. This white paper from Boostability takes a deep dive into two specific things you need to know about and look for when choosing an SEO vendor.

Read more »

Search Shorts

Fishy licenses in Google Ads

Submitting URLs. If you need to submit URLs manually to Google, that might mean your site has quality issues, Google's John Mueller said.

Favicon updates. John Mueller from Google said favicons can take time for Google to process and update.

Google knowledge panel see connections. Google has a new(ish) feature that enables users who click on people in the knowledge panel to "see the connections" between those people.

Distilled acquired. The folks at digital marketing agency Brainlabs has acquired Distilled, a respected SEO agency founded by Will Critchlow and Duncan Morris. Many readers will also know Brainlabs CEO and PPC pro Dan Gilbert.

Irish investigate Google's use of location data. Ireland's Data Protection Commission said it will be investigating "the legality of Google's processing of location data" under GDPR. With a few exceptions — where the data is truly anonymous — affirmative consent is required to collect user location.

Your next step towards search marketing success

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