🔍 Predictive purchase, churn audiences in GA

Jul 14, 2020

Good morning Search Marketer, do you jump on the newest thing knowing it might disappear?

AMP is the latest Google push that many web publishers dumped a lot of time and resources into only to see it potentially fade out when it no longer becomes a requirement to get their content into Top Stories. Authorship, rel=prev/next … the list of features that are no longer supported is not a short one. Is the benefit — even if short-term — in visibility and conversions going to be worth the investment? There's always a risk/reward analysis that has to go into deciding whether to jump on a new feature.

More predictive marketing features are on the way. Google Analytics is rolling out new predictive audience metrics and targeting options in App + Web properties. Target and analyze users deemed likely to make a purchase in the next seven days or entice users that aren't likely to have come back to your site or app within the next seven days with Purchase Probability and Churn Probability audiences.

This is yet another example of digital marketing moving from keyword-focused targeting to known audience targeting to predictive intent targeting powered by machine learning and AI that I spoke about in my SMX Next keynote last month. Understanding how these systems work and when to implement the features powered by them are now among the skills critical for PPC marketers.

Ginny Marvin,
Editor-In-Chief

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Search Shorts

Links and smart site structure

Links without input. John Mueller of Google said "just because links are placed without your input doesn't make them bad (it usually makes them good, even)."

Smart site structure. "When changing a deep URL structure into a flat one (which is essentially that), you're making it easier to find URLs, but less interesting to do so. That's not an improvement. The trick is to make it easy and interesting – which you can do much better with a smart site structure." Some sage advice again from Google's John Mueller.

QR code links. Here is a fun tweet from John Mueller "links in QR codes are the real nofollow links."

Yelp Brings Back Most of 1K Furloughed Employees. Earlier this year, Yelp furloughed more than 1,000 of its employees. It announced yesterday that it's bringing "nearly all of them back," with sales reps returning on a "staggered timeline over a four-month period." A Yelp spokesperson says the company remains "cautious but optimistic" in the face of the continued challenges of COVID-19.