Daily Archives: July 23, 2020

Small businesses (SMBs) are now in a Darwinian struggle for survival. The fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic is completely disrupting and reconfiguring the market, with some SMBs adapting and others calling it quits. This will have big implications for marketing and advertising as well. In its Q2 economic report, Yelp paints a picture of increased consumer activity in late May and early June driving the growth of infections in states such as Florida and California. The report also quantifies the number of local businesses that are permanently closing. According to a separate, June survey of 1,200 SMBs by Small Business for America’s Future, 23% said they considered closing their doors permanently. […]

Google is showing attributes from product feeds in Shopping ads. If you needed more reason to pay attention to all the attributes available for your products in your Google product feed, here’s one: Google is surfacing more attributes from merchants’ product feeds in Shopping Ads. The example above, spotted by Jackson Lo, SEO lead, international growth at Shopify, this week, shows apparel ads with the “Material” attribute. A Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land that surfacing attributes in Shopping ads is live on mobile and is now being tested on desktop. I was curious if this was mainly showing on ads for brand queries, but I was also able to […]

Earlier this year, Google surprised merchants by opening up the Google Shopping tab in its search results to free product listings. Now for the next phase of the shakeup: commission-free access to Buy on Google, the company’s native checkout from product listings. It is also integrating with third-parties to make it easier for merchants to streamline order management and payments. Items available to Buy on Google are indicated by a shopping cart icon in Google Shopping. Why we care. The combined moves of making Google Shopping and Buy on Google checkout free for retailers will make it much more accessible to a wider range of sellers than other marketplaces. Not […]

Structured Data Testing Tool was a simple yet effective tool to diagnose problems with Schema markup code snippets whether those issues were related to invalid usage, syntax, or a property that was required or recommended. We could edit our code snippets directly in the tool until we saw a list of green checks. Not only that, but it was perfect for quickly visualizing which types and properties a webpage had provided, something highly useful for harder-to-read microdata. I know, it’s not even dead yet and I’m already referring to it with the past tense. *sobs gently* The SDTT strikes nostalgia in the hearts of many of those Structured Data tinkerers […]

So long as the COVID-19 pandemic remains in our lives, brick-and-mortar businesses will experience a roller coaster of re-openings, temporary closures, victories and setbacks. Along the way, it’s clear that they’ll need to monitor their Google My Business (GMB) listings closely to protect their reputations. In recent months, we’ve seen Google launch several features designed to help businesses react to the pandemic by updating their GMBs with relevant information that affects their operations. Let’s take a closer look at those features and how businesses should view them. Temporarily closed The introduction of a Temporarily Closed feature made it possible for businesses to make the distinction between a permanent closure and […]