Welcome to ‘What Happened in Search’.
Packed full of the week’s search marketing news each Friday, this week’s hot topics are Ofcom’s Communications Market Report, the impact Google’s mobile-friendly algorithm, the Panda 4.2 refresh and Google’s Search Analytics API.
GET SMART
33% of British people now view their smartphones as their most important device for accessing the Internet.
This week’s announcement from Ofcom showed that smartphones have overtaken laptops – In 2014, 40% used their laptop as the go-to device. That figure has dropped by 10% this year.
UK adults now spend over 20 hours per week online – a figure which has doubled in the past decade.
The 2015 Communications Market Report also showed that, unsurprisingly, Google’s digital audience is at 39.6 million, with an active reach of 83%. Bing comes in second with 17.3 million, while Yahoo Search trails at 14 million.
See the full report.
MOBILE SEARCH IMPACT
According to a study of ‘1,000 important e-commerce keywords’ covering a range of industries, Google’s mobile algorithm has had a clear impact on visibility and ranking for non-mobile-friendly sites.
The report found that in 81% of cases mobile-friendly sites ranked within the top three results on Google search. Overall, 77% of search results on the first page were mobile-friendly.
Broken down by vertical, retail came out on top, with 80% of page one search results being mobile-friendly, while Travel and Hospitality were third, at 75%.
SEARCH ANALYTICS API
This week Google launched its Search Analytics API for the Search Console.
This means webmasters can now programme their tools and reporting, taking data from the new Search Analytics Report, which brings many improvements, and returns previously hidden information about search queries, impressions and clicks.
Examples of data webmasters can pull include the top 10 queries by click count and the top 10 queries or mobile queries in a given country.
PANDA 4.2: NEED TO KNOW
Following Google’s announcement that it began rolling out Panda 4.2 at the end of July, there are plenty of questions, partly due to the slow nature of the refresh.
Search Engine Land asked Google some of the most common questions, in the hopes of achieving some clarity on what to expect.
One of the biggest is from those wondering when they’ll know if their site’s been impacted by the Panda update, to which the answer is months.
Find more detailed questions and answers at the link below.
LIVE STREAM LAUNCHES
In a challenge to Periscope and Meerkat, Facebook has launched its own live streaming service.
Dubbed Live, the new feature is currently only available to public figures and celebrities for publishing purposes. Facebook says this will enable them to “take fans behind the scenes, host a Q&A, share announcements, and more”.
