Welcome to ‘What Happened in Search’.
Packed full of the week’s search marketing news each Friday, this week’s top stories feature Google’s keyword quality score, the Google+ divorce and Amazon Launchpad.
TOP NOTCH
Google announced on Monday that it has updated keyword quality score reporting in AdWords.
The move will not affect the way in which quality scores are calculated, or ad auctions, but will have an impact on the numbers advertisers see in AdWords. This means that new keywords will automatically be assigned a quality score of six, which will then recalibrate when the keyword has gained enough impressions.
Google’s reason behind the change is simplifying this process, so the search giant can “focus our attention on improving reporting accuracy for keywords with traffic”.
TAKE OFF
This week Amazon unleashed its latest offering, Amazon Launchpad.
The new service aims to help startups “launch, market, and distribute their products to hundreds of millions of Amazon customers across the globe.”
Amazon has also promised Launchpad partners access to its international fulfillment network as well as brand development support.
The platform’s backers include accelerator Y Combinator and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
HIGH HOPES
One notable update during the launch of Windows 10 this week was the news that Bing and Cortana will be built in.
David Pann, Bing’s General Manager, said the launch will bring good news to advertisers, “We’re estimating query volume gains from 10 to 15 percent as early as September — not only from new users, but from existing Bing users”.
The rationale is that with an integral approach to search, it will become far more intuitive for users.
SPLITTING UP
In good news for the majority of users of the likes of YouTube, Google+ accounts will no longer be a requirement for those looking to use Google’s other services.
In Google’s own language, the company will, “move some features that aren’t essential to an interest-based social experience out of Google+”. Kicking off the separation with YouTube, users will no longer need a G+ profile to sign up, upload or comment.
Triggering a fresh batch of ‘Google+ is dead’ news stories, there are plenty who are hoping this is the beginning of the end.
FRESH FACED
YouTube’s CEO Susan Wojcicki gave a keynote at the VidCon conference, announcing several updates to the platform.
These include a new look for YouTube on mobile devices and ‘diamond’ playback buttons for the most popular creators. The playback buttons will be available for those with over 10 million subscribers on the channel, while the mobile redesign sees three simple tabs and is available to Android app users, with an iOS app update in the works.