🔍 Google Ads Auto Applied Recommendations: How to know if you're using them

Nov 18, 2020

Good morning Search Marketer, here's one mystery solved.

You might recall a while back when Google told advertisers about a pilot program that would automatically apply changes to their Ads accounts. Well, that program is now in beta, and you might not remember if you or your clients are opted-in or -out of it.

Lior Krolewicz of Yael Consulting wrote this week that a keyword he didn't recognize led him to discover a client had opted into the "Maximum impact" setting of Auto Applied Recommendations, not really knowing what the program did. Further, Krolewicz learned that these automated changes aren't reflected in Change History at this point. Read more about this program, what it's designed to do and how to check if you're in it.

In SEO news, the disavow link tool is now available in the new Google Search Console. You can also download the file now, too.

Keep reading for more on Twitter's version of Stories and more.

Ginny Marvin,
Editor-in-Chief

Social Short

Twitter launches Fleets, tests social audio feature

Twitter has launched Fleets, the company's version of Stories allows users to post content that vanishes after 24 hours. "You can Fleet text, reactions to Tweets, photos or videos and customize your Fleets with various background and text options," Twitter explained.

Twitter is also testing an audio feature with which users can come together for live conversations, similar to the Clubhouse app that's still in pilot. In an effort to avoid the moderation challenges that Clubhouse has found, Twitter said, ""We are going to launch this first experiment of spaces to a very small group of people — a group of people who are disproportionately impacted by abuse and harm on the platform: women and those from marginalized backgrounds," TechCrunch reported.

Why we care. Twitter has been slower to develop new product features commonplace on other platforms — even LinkedIn had Stories first — but Fleets and audio features could bring interesting new ways of engaging users on the platform beyond 280 characters. Twitter also continues to work on voice tweets for Android and is testing audio DMs.

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Search Shorts

Crawl budget is shared between organic and ads.

Organic & ads share crawl budget. Did you know that both Google and Microsoft Bing share crawl budget between organic search and search ads? Fabrice Canel from Bing confirmed it here and John Mueller from Google confirmed it here.

How to join a Google office hours. Google has created a help document explaining how to join a Google Search Central office hours.

Google Maps for the holidays. Among several Maps updates, Google has enhanced the 'COVID layer' for Android and iOS with more detail and data. The company also announced a new in-car friendly Google Assistant UI for Android, with the ability to do more while driving, without looking.

How to check Google search results for different locations

Sponsored by SEO PowerSuite

It's no secret that the same query will often produce different Google search results in different locations. Someone looking to "buy a bike" in Atlanta will see different suggestions than someone using the same query in New York. And two people looking for a "pizza place" might end up with different results if they are just a block apart.

As an SEO, you should aim for optimizing the version of Google search results that your target audience is most likely to see, which means you'll need to be able to change locations when researching SERPs as well as monitoring your rankings. In this article, you'll learn how to research that information for different countries, cities and even streets.

Read More »

What does the future hold for SEO?

Join 2020 Search Engine Land Award winners Areej AbuAli and Mike King for two forward-thinking keynotes, December 8-9, only at SMX. Reflect on what's changed — from evolving SERPs to new opportunities with A.I. — and prepare for what comes next!

Get the details here »