Our Senior Performance Marketing Manager, Tom, and Senior Performance Marketing Executive, Kylie, discuss this week’s top digital headlines. The biggest news this week is about how much impact ad fraud has on PPC campaigns. Plus, how social media platforms are gearing up to be the next big retailers. Also, we talk about whether privacy could be killing marketing or not, Google announcing that they have dropped Safe Browsing as a ranking signal for the new Page Experience update, and Google’s John Mueller answered a question on Reddit last week about the possibility of recovering rankings after downtime.
Here are this week’s five digital headlines to watch:
The consequences of ad fraud
Ad fraud has a sometimes devastating impact on PPC campaigns – with budgets, ROAS, and campaign data being skewed. With a recent statistic saying 20% of clicks on PPC ads are caused by click fraud – we aim to share with you the consequences of ad fraud and the ways to best spot it before it causes serious harm.
Google drops safe browsing as a Page Experience ranking factor
Google announced that they have dropped Safe Browsing as a ranking signal for the new Page Experience update that is currently rolling out. This is due to the fact that the issues around safe browsing aren’t always in the control of site owners.
Google Search Console launched a new version of its Page Experience report to reflect this drop in ranking factors and now continues to show issues related to:
- Core Web Vitals
- Mobile friendly
- HTTPS
Google will, however, continue to flag when there are unsafe browsing issues in Search Console, outside of the Page Experience report, so that site owners can identify anything unusual.
Of course, we don’t want to promote unsafe browsing as this could cause problems in the user experience. But, if you are unable to change this, it is one less ranking factor you need to be concerned with as the Page Experience ranking continues to roll out this month.
Social media platforms want in on e-commerce
It seems like social media platforms no longer want to be just for posting updates about your life. They now want in on the e-commerce retail industry. Many platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat all now have shopping features in some form.
The new craving for consumers to purchase from their everyday social media sites was accelerated during the pandemic. Many shoppers looked to new and exciting places to buy things. The article above highlights how retailing on social media platforms is here to stay.
Has privacy killed marketing?
Being a marketer in 2021 means that privacy is now at the forefront of everything we do, and is also sometimes seen as a hindrance to what we do.
Many companies are cracking down on marketers targeting their audiences at all costs. Things like hyper-targeting, third-party cookies, and hyper-personalisation are on the frontline of the battle.
The article discusses how marketers are having to change their strategies and whether saying ‘privacy has killed marketing’ is a massive overreaction.
Website downtime shouldn’t impact rankings
Google’s John Mueller answered a question on Reddit last week about the possibility of recovering rankings after downtime. He was confident that this should only take a week or two. However, if it takes longer for a ranking to pop back in then the drop likely wasn’t caused by downtime.
He gave a few points to explain further:
- Google doesn’t see temporary downtime as a quality issue, rather a technical glitch, therefore it’s not a sign that a website is bad and shouldn’t be served.
- A website that is down won’t suffer immediate drops – if Google sees an unreachable URL or a 5xx status code, they will retry in the next couple of days.
- If a website is returning a 4xx status code, Google will start to deindex its pages. Mueller said it would likely take about a week until you noticed a significant drop in indexed pages.
- Provided that a site goes back live within days of being down, once pages get re-indexed, Mueller has reassured they will bounce back to the same positions as before.
- If rankings don’t recover after 5 days of the site being back up and running, it is likely another issue has caused the ranking drops.
Are you looking for digital marketing support? Drop us an email at team@modo25.com for an informal chat. We look forward to discovering how we can support you with your digital marketing success – let’s work together.
