2020 has been a hectic year for our city, country, and world. The COVID-19 outbreak, Murder Hornets, UFO’s, and social injustice discussions have made it difficult for many to keep up with our industry trends. Google continues to develop new advances for its multitude of advertising platforms and services. Below are some updates from this month.
Google Bots Can Add Products to Shopping Carts
Are you positive your abandoned cart metrics are accurate? Recently, many e-commerce site owners utilizing Google Merchant Center have filed complaints against a serial cart abandoner named John Smith. It turns out that John Smith is a Google bot. When questioned, the company stated that “We use automated systems to ensure consumers are getting accurate pricing information from our merchants.” Many sellers do not realize that when they upload their product feeds to the Center, they agree to have Google bots crawl their site to verify pricing. This bot checks that the price shown in the Google feed matches the pricing found on the product page and the product pricing once added to the cart. As the bot leaves the cart abandoned, this may skew cart abandoner data for many e-commerce site owners. If you have noticed an increase in cart abandoners for your site, it may be due to a Google bot.
Google Tests Ads on Local Business Profiles
As the company has done in past years, Google is again testing ads on local business profiles. The latest test displays on mobile and desktop for those businesses listed in the restaurant category. Unfortunately, local businesses cannot opt-out nor choose what advertisements display on their profiles. However, the test is currently showing ads related to the specific company page. So far, individuals have seen these ads running for offers from Groupon, Seamless, and Caviar on multiple restaurant profiles. If this test proves successful, Google has found a new way to monetize on local businesses.
Google Ads App Now Supports Manager Accounts
The Google Ads App updated this week to support Manager Accounts. This update makes it easier for account managers to access top-level performance data across all of their accounts on mobile devices. This update will also allow them to receive push notifications for their accounts.
Google Images Adds Quick Facts
Google announced it added a new feature to Google Images search on mobile. This update will display facts about what you see on Google Images in a Knowledge Graph. Google tested this feature for the past few weeks and now released the feature to all. The company stated that “when you search for an image on mobile in the U.S., you might see information from the Knowledge Graph related to the result. That information would include people, places, or things related to the image from the Knowledge Graph’s database of billions of facts, helping you explore the topic more.” If you notice a spike in traffic from Google Images to your website, that may be due to your content displaying in the Knowledge Graph.
Google Rich Results Test Tool
Google has moved the Rich Results Test tool out of beta, and it now fully supports all Google Search rich result features. The Rich Results Test tool will show which Search feature enhancements are valid for the markup you provide as well as handle dynamically loaded structured data markup more effectively, render both mobile and desktop versions, and fully align with Search Console reports. With this change, Google plans to phase out the Structured Data Testing Tool. This tool will still be available for the time being, but users need to be prepared to switch to the Rich Results Test tool.
It’s only July 9. What do you think the company has in store for the rest of the month?