All Script And Tols For Free: 🔍 An ads guy is running Google Search now?

🔍 An ads guy is running Google Search now?

Jun 08, 2020

Good morning Search Marketer, and a happy birthday to my father, who knows I do something related to search engines.

When Prabhakar Raghavan was named Google's new head of Search and Assistant last week, some SEOs were asking, "'What's an ads guy doing running Google Search?'

Raghavan had served as head of Ads and Commerce since 2018. But though Ads and Commerce will report to him (which, as we reported, is not unusual for the company), Raghavan's background makes him well-suited to running Search, reports Greg Sterling, who has spoken with Raghavan several times over the past 20 years. Raghavan has written numerous technical papers on search and related topics over the past three decades and is the author of at least two significant search-related texts: Randomized Algorithms (1995) and Introduction to Information Retrieval (2008).

Will publishers drop AMP? That was the question George Nguyen put to SEOs and publishers on the news that Google will lift the AMP requirement for showing in Top Stories next year. The answers are more nuanced than you might expect, and it's a piece worthy of your time.

Google Ads Explanations. In the short amount of time I've spent playing with the new Explanations tool in Google Ads, I've been impressed. It's designed to help make it easier to identify the causes behind big shifts in campaign performance. It's in beta and there are limitations — Search manual/eCPC campaigns only — but it's handy, and I can also see it being a good training tool.

Got a hot tip for your fellow marketers? Do you have an insight, practice or tool tip? Maybe you've got advice on communication, reporting or team-building? Let's get the word out! Tag your insight with #SELProTip on social media, and we may feature it in the newsletter and on our channels.

Keep reading for a line on free diversity and inclusion courses, Search Shorts and more.

Ginny Marvin,
Editor-in-Chief

Call to Action

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Social Shorts

Featured snippets, blocking bots and translating content.

Featured snippet tracking. With the new highlight and anchor feature for featured snippets, there is tracking code in the URL but that doesn't mean Google will offer reporting on this in Search Console.

Just block it. Here is a good line from Google's John Mueller, he said "if you want to block something from being crawled, you should block it from being crawled :)"

Translating content. Here is an interesting thread from Google's John Mueller on translated content, just start here and scroll up.

Explore the SMX Next Agenda!

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