Good morning Search Marketer, thinking of unique greetings is the most difficult part of writing the newsletter for me and I'm just as awkward at it in real life!
Remember those related search activity cards in your Google mobile search results? The ones that help you quickly revisit a page you've been to before? They're about to look very different for product, job and recipe-related searches. Google has redesigned them for these verticals to make it easier for users to take the next step in their journey, taking the emphasis away from repeat site visits and promoting comparison shopping, new job listings and viewing similar recipes.
Bing Shopping has opened up to free product listings — you may remember Google Shopping making waves when it did this same thing in April. Microsoft Shopping Campaigns customers don't need to do anything to participate as all approved product offers in Microsoft Merchant Center are automatically opted in. Whether this will be enough to attract more retailers and shoppers to Bing's platform remains to be seen.
In local news… (you get it?) Yelp's looking to provide lead-gen opportunities for SMBs with its updated "Request a Quote" and new "Nearby Jobs" features. The latter, introduced in 2016, includes a revamped lead-gen questionnaire and will be expanded to 100 business categories. These two features, along with a refreshed UI on its desktop site, mobile site and mobile app, are all part of Yelp's differentiation strategy and efforts to diversify away from advertising.
"Frenemies" might be one way to describe Google and Mozilla Firefox's relationship as the two renew their "default search" partnership. Mozilla relies on search partnerships for revenue, and antitrust scrutiny over Chrome in Europe and domestically means that Google needs competitors in the web browser arena. Firefox has also positioned itself as an advocate for consumer privacy — Google, maybe not so much. "As Firefox turns its development attention to other revenue-generating projects, we may see its market share further erode," writes Greg Sterling, "But as a practical matter, the U.S. browser market has become a two-company contest between Chrome and Safari."
Ranking factors are all about machine learning and they're constantly evolving — that's what we learned from Microsoft's Fabrice Canal and Christi Olson during their chat with Barry Schwartz on Live with Search Engine Land. It makes sense since search intent is also always in flux: a search for "movies" a year ago might have yielded movie theaters, as where now, in the midst of a pandemic, that's probably not what the user is looking for. Read Barry's takeaways or watch the full video (64 minutes) for even more advice on what to prioritize when it comes to optimizing for search.
George Nguyen,
Editor
