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After my column about Home Service Ads came out last week, I got a message from Google with some great news. They told me two things: Google plans to add pure service-area businesses (SABs) back into the local results — this includes home-based businesses. The disappearance of results for home-based …

Business listings with more content see more engagement, tend to rank higher and perform better overall. And as more searches take place on mobile devices (and eventually smart speakers and virtual assistants), marketers will need to expose more local business attributes and enhanced data for discovery and competitive advantage. According …

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Yext begins to verticalize local business listings syndication with ‘Yext for Food’Oct 12, 2017 by Greg Sterling Moves seek to provide enhanced data with more vertically …

Update 10/11/17: We have heard back from Google on several outstanding questions and clarifications and updated this story to reflect that and what it lays out in a new FAQ about the change.  Following last week’s sudden announcement that Google AdWords campaigns may now spend as much as twice the daily …

Following last week’s sudden announcement that Google AdWords campaigns may now spend as much as twice the daily budget that advertisers set for their campaigns, many advertisers now find themselves heading into the fourth quarter with some unanswered questions about the implications of this new structure. The change went into …

Google’s traffic acquisition costs (TAC) have been climbing. As Google’s ad revenues grow, so does the money it pays to partners and distributors. Investors are particularly sensitive to this issue. In response to investor questions, Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat explained recently that Google’s increasing traffic costs are partly about mobile …

Google has long stressed the importance of “high-quality content” but has provided little, if any, help for those seeking to create it. Until now. Last month, Google’s Developer Relations Group publicly published five different guides aimed at helping its own creators “striving for high-quality documentation.” And “documentation,” when posted online, means digital content. …

A number of Google Home Mini devices that were distributed to members of the press had a defect that caused them to record everything being said around them. This discovery renewed privacy concerns surrounding smart speakers as surreptitious listening devices in our homes. The problem was first discovered by Android Police. …

In Google’s world, site speed matters. And the search giant is pushing hard on AMP, its open source initiative to improve web page speed and performance for mobile users. But that speed comes at a cost for digital marketers. AMP eliminates scripts — including the scripts that help you track …

Google has announced that the new AdWords interface is now available to all advertisers. The new “experience” was unveiled last year, followed by a rollout over several months, from August of last year until the present. Along with new features for data visualization, the overhaul enhances load speed of account …