Welcome to ‘What Happened in Search’.
Packed full of the week’s search marketing news each Friday, this week features a URL upgrades reminder, autoplay on Twitter, UK mobile search rates and Google’s core ranking update.
REMINDER: UPGRADED URLS DEADLINE JULY 1, 2015
Back in February, Google announced that Upgraded URLs would soon be replacing Destination URLs in AdWords. That time is almost here and from July 1st all advertisers will need to start using the Upgraded URLs throughout their accounts.
Advertisers using auto-tagging only will see their URLs automatically migrated to the new URL fields on July 1st. While those using URL tracking from a third-party will need to make the move manually, so it’s recommended not to leave the transition until the last minute.
You can view AdWords’ short introduction video on the update here.
TWITTER INTRODUCES VIDEO AUTOPLAY
Following in Facebook’s footsteps, Twitter announced its move into the autoplay video market this week. With the update rolled out on iOS on Tuesday and coming soon to Android.
However in a move to set the social platform apart from its competitors, the company will only charge advertisers for videos that are 100% in-view for at least three seconds.
MOBILE OVERTAKES UK SEARCHES
In May this year, Google confirmed that searches on mobile devices had overtaken desktop searches in 10 countries including the US and Japan.
The remaining eight countries were left ambiguous, but Google UK-Ireland’s Managing Director officially announced that the UK was one of them at this week’s London Tech Week.
OPENING HOURS
As more and more brands provide business information on Google, Maps has become more intelligent, now informing users if they have enough time to explore a place.
The new feature is listed in Maps’ updated changelog.
In a bid to eradicate wasteful journeys, users will now receive a warning when they are about to navigate to a place that will be closed at the time of arrival.
GOOGLE CONFIRMS ALGORITHM UPDATE
Was it Penguin? Was it Panda? No, Google has now confirmed that it was a core ranking change that occurred on Thursday. With a number of automated tracking tools indicating change in the Google search results yesterday, the search engine has released the following statement:
“This is not a Panda update. As you know, we’re always making improvements to our search algorithms and the web is constantly evolving. We’re going to continue to work on improvements across the board”.