Author: synapse

Google Launches Automated Call Extensions on Mobile

One of the more recent updates within Google AdWords is automated call extensions for landing pages that prominently feature phone numbers.  This update was announced in early January, and just rolled out last month.  As many advertisers were notified, the update by Google is intended to make it easier for users to make calls to businesses through their mobile phones, and will allow for more detailed reporting insights on call performance.  Google stated that this year, mobile search engines are expected to drive around 33 billion click-to calls to businesses globally (19% more calls than from mobile landing pages alone).  As Synapse has learned with many of our B2B clients, more and more lead-gen companies are relying on marrying call data with online form data to determine their total number of prospective opportunities.  This update by Google will make it even easier for advertisers to properly set up click-to-call moving forward.

What’s Changing?

First and foremost, if you do not already have call extensions set up within your account, Google will begin automatically creating call extensions based on prominent phone numbers listed on your landing page.  Previously, you would create call extensions manually through the call extensions tab.  You could set up your business phone number, or a dynamic phone number and have Google automatically generate numbers and forward to your business.  Have phone numbers that are dynamically generated?

Not to worry.  Google will only automatically pull in phone numbers that are not dynamic in nature.  If you’re already running call extensions, Google will leave everything as-is.  If for any reason you do not wish to have click-to-call set up within your account, make sure to go to your call extensions tab and remove any that Google may have already created for you (the update was activated on February 6^th).

What else may be impacted?

Along with the automated call extensions, which limits time manually updating ad extensions and minimizes room for error, Google also noted that there would be more robust reporting.  Not only will you see the number of calls per day as you used to, but also call duration as well as start and end times.  Additionally, Google will provide the caller area code for each phone call, and whether the call connected.  Advertisers can also set up call conversion tracking to see which campaigns are driving the most valuable calls.

What other options are there outside of automated call extensions?

Some third-party solutions such as DialogTech and CallRail could be an alternative solution to ensure you’re tracking client leads all the way through to opportunities and sales.  While automated call extensions offer more robust insights than the original call extensions, third party solutions may be a great alternative to ensure you’re able to track all the way through the funnel.  One caveat to these solutions is that you’ll need to be sure you have sufficient volume – without a certain number of clicks in each ad group, some of these solutions won’t work properly.

While there are mixed reviews out there right now on Google’s latest automated call extension update, one thing is for certain: Google’s push for updates specific to mobile-advertising is only getting more aggressive as the months progress.  We fully expect to see additional mobile-focused updates come out from Google in the upcoming months, hopefully allowing for more robust insights in terms of tracking all the way through the funnel.

If you’d like to learn more about how Synapse SEM can help you improve your paid search or organic strategy, please email us at

sa***@sy********.com











or call us at 781-591-0752.

Are Slow Site Load Times Crippling Your Digital Marketing Programs?

Sluggish site load times are a core finding on over 50% of the Technical SEO audits we perform for our clients.  When we present our clients the data and show them Google’s Page Speed Insights, we’re often asked, “Is it worth investing to improve these load times?”.

Even in a world with limited budgets and back-logged internal resources, our answer is increasingly becoming, “Yes.”

Improving site load times is an easy task to push off.  Optimized load times are not prerequisites to running search engine marketing programs.  If you want to spend money on search with a slow site, Google or Bing will happily take your money.  On the SEO front, content development initiatives often take priority over the technical work required to fix poor load times. But as the competition has literally ‘quickened,’ the ramifications of a slow site have become more and more pronounced.

Poor site load times have many detrimental effects on website performance, but several stand out as the most problematic:

1. The User Engagement and Revenue Impact – Slow load times are a major driver behind user bounces and exits. “58% of shoppers will leave a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.”  For Amazon, for example, “a 100 millisecond improvement in load time [is equivalent to] a 1% revenue increase.” These stats demonstrate a clear connection between page speed and conversions and ultimately ROI.
2. The SEO Impact – Load times are becoming an increasingly important algorithmic signal for Google. Google has been open that page load times are a major signal in their ranking algorithm for computers, but they’ve recently announced that the same signal will soon affect mobile rankings as well.  Furthermore, research has shown that “slow page speed means that search engines can crawl fewer pages using their allocated crawl budget, and this could negatively affect your indexation.”
3. The SEM Impact—As stated above, Google and Bing will let you run search ads despite your site’s load time issues. That doesn’t mean, however, that there are not repercussions to poor load times in an SEM account.  Landing page experience is a factor in determining keyword Quality Score.  A component of Google’s landing page experience assessment is site load times.  Google explains, “If it takes too long for your website to load when someone clicks on your ad, they’re more likely to give up and leave your website. This unwelcome behavior can signal to Google that your landing page experience is poor, which could negatively impact your Ad Rank. That’s why you want to make sure your landing page load time is up to speed.”

From conversion rate, to SEO rankings, to SEM ROI, site load times are having a major impact on the performance of your digital marketing programs.  Have you pushed off improving site speed?  If so, it’s time to get into action and make site speed a priority and a core KPI in your digital strategy.

To learn more about improving your site’s load times and implementing a technically sound SEO strategy, please contact us today!

4 Considerations When Determining Your PPC and SEO Budgets

One of the most common questions that arises in the world of digital marketing is, ‘how do I most effectively allocate my digital marketing budget?’ This question comes up frequently amongst our clients, and unfortunately there is no cut and dry response.  The answer to this question depends upon many factors, but for the purpose of this article (as well as our readers’ sanity) we’ll narrow our thoughts down to 4 important factors to consider when determining how heavily to invest in paid search and SEO.

1) Are you an established site with reasonable domain authority, or are you a completely new business?

If you are a business with a completely new site, chances are there isn’t a ton of awareness out there about your brand.  You also likely don’t have much SEO credibility, which means you’re probably not showing prominently in Google for your key terms.  To start generating leads or sales, the best bet is to begin advertising through paid search, where you can pay for immediate visibility for your most important keywords.   Because SEO improvements take much longer to take effect, paid search is your best option.  If you are a firm that is already established, with strong rankings (which would mean you’re ranking on page 1-2 on critical keywords), a more even investment could be made across paid search and SEO. This will allow you to capture leads quickly through PPC, but also continue expanding upon the organic keyword set you’re currently ranking on.

2) What does your timeline look like?

The next most logical question to consider is your timeline.  How quickly do you need to gain these leads or sales?  Do you have an upcoming deadline and are you behind on your goals for lead volume?  If you have set goals to hit a certain number of leads within the next 6-12 months, invest in paid search.  Ranking organically can take 6-12 months or longer, and by then you’ll just be starting to rank (and definitely won’t be hitting your goals).  If you have more time to spare and are more concerned with longer term lead generation, investing in organic is a safe bet to ensure you build domain authority to get your site to rank.  If you have short-term AND long-term goals you must meet, then investing in both channels is critical.

3) Are you profit or revenue focused?

Is your business more focused on profitability or revenue growth?  This is a tricky one, and timing, as well as how established your site is, definitely come into play here.  SEO and PPC can work with either of these goals, however SEO is a better long-term solution to driving efficient profit (you’re not paying for organic clicks, after all).  With PPC, you have more control over tracking and optimizing based on ROI, but it will be the more expensive option in the long run. If your site is already well-established organically, you may be able to grow your bottom line by investing more aggressively in paid search.  For lead generation, paid search will be the better option if you want a certain number of leads and want them quickly. For longer-term lead-gen, you’ll want to invest more heavily in SEO, since that’s where most of the click traffic goes.  Your KPIs are critical to consider, but timing and current positioning within organic results also play into this decision.

4) How niche is your business?

While paid search is an extremely effective and profitable channel most the time, certain ‘niche’ businesses have markets that are so specific or narrow, they may not fare so well in the world of paid search.  Businesses that require mainly long tail keywords will not generate a substantial amount of search volume.  In many cases, shorter-tail terms aren’t specific enough for these businesses, and will lead to high costs for too many unqualified leads.  In the case of a business with a niche market, SEO may be a better avenue for investment, to ensure you are gaining visibility on these same short-tail terms, without the high costs associated with unqualified traffic.  If these happen to be terms that seem too broad, it’s not as much of a risk because you aren’t paying for the click with SEO.  Relevancy is always important to consider, however it will pay off more in the long run to target broader terms that actually generate volume organically, than to run paid marketing for inefficient short-tail terms or low volume long-tail terms.

Though these are just a handful of considerations for determining your search marketing budget allocation, we hope this helps you get started in thinking about the best avenue for your company to take.

If you’d like to learn more about how Synapse SEM can help you improve your paid search or organic strategy, please complete our contact form or call us at 781-591-0752.

What You Need to Know About Google’s Expanded Text Ads

In our latest blog post regarding expanded text ads (ETAs), we talked about the expected outcomes of running expanded text ads within your campaigns.  Now that we’ve had these ads live for a few months for several of our clients, we found some surprising results and unexpected outcomes.

When first launching this new ad format across our high volume ad groups back in July, we were not seeing the results we expected.  CTR was not significantly improving (and in some cases they were worse), conversion rate was lower, and most curiously – impressions for our expanded text ads were lower than our standard ads (even though we were set on indefinite rotation).  Given all the hype Google had created around this beta, we were understandably disappointed.

Our team spent some time brainstorming different ideas as to why performance was down for our ETA ads.  Were people confused by this new layout and unsure of whether they wanted to engage with these new ad formats?  Did the ETAs look too busy with the extensive text and double headlines?  Perhaps the display URLs that were automatically pulling in were not perfectly optimized in terms of URL structure, and thus looked strange within the ETA ads.  The performance indicator that truly had us baffled, however, was the low impression split for ETAs.  Unable to explain the discrepancy in impressions, our team did what any search team in crisis has learned to do: we called Google.

The Google representatives we spoke to confirmed that prior to July 26, ETAs were not eligible to show 100% of the time.  Up through July 26, Google had gradually increased the percentage of impressions that ETAs were eligible to show for (i.e. 20%, then 50%, etc.).  On July 26, the update was made that allowed ETAs to show up for 100% of impressions, just like standard ads.  This piece of information made a big difference in how we were analyzing our ad performance.  Below, we’ve outlined the differences in ETA versus standard ad performance both before and after the update on July 26, when the ETAs became eligible to show 100% of the time.

Impression volume and CTR

Prior to the update in July, impressions were down for ETAs by 25-30% versus impressions for our standard ads.  CTR for standard ads was also not too far off from the ETA CTR, with less than a 15% difference between the two.  This was not in line with the expectations Google had set, which was an average 20% improvement in CTR for ETAs versus standard ads.  It wasn’t until after the switch on July 26 that impressions evened out for ETA ads (and in some cases even outweighed standard ad impressions).  CTR also improved for ETA ads after the update in July, (21% above the CTR for standard ads) finally meeting the expectations that Google had set.

Conversion Rate

Prior to the update in July which allowed ETAs to be eligible for 100% of auctions, conversion rate was down 5% for ETAs versus standard ads for our higher volume clients and ad groups.  Post-July update, ETA conversion rate actually outperformed standard ads by 10%.  While Google originally had not made any promises regarding shifts in conversion rate, it’s great to see that the longer ads are leading to a stronger rate of conversion.

Cost Per Click

Before the July update, ETAs still had more efficient CPCs, however the margin between ETA CPCs and standard ad CPCs only improved with the July update.  Prior to July, ETA CPCs were 11% more efficient than standard ads for our highest volume clients.  Once the switch was made in July, ETA CPCs were 17% more efficient.  Why could this be happening?  Potentially due to improvements in Quality Score with ETA ads now that more characters are allowed, which allows advertisers to more easily incorporate relevant keywords into their messaging.

There are still some mixed reviews out there on how expanded text ads are performing versus standard ads, but across our clients we have certainly seen improvements now that all ETAs are 100% eligible to show.  With Google permanently rolling out ETAs in October, it’s important for advertisers to begin analyzing performance on their expanded ads as soon as possible.  Synapse clients have certainly seen improvements, but it remains to be seen whether improved ETA performance will be able to stand the test of time.  If you tested ETAs when they first launched and were disappointed by the results, consider retesting.  The initial issues surrounding impression share have been resolved, and we’re seeing in many cases even better impression share for ETAs vs standard ads.

If you’d like to learn more about how Synapse SEM can help you improve your paid search strategy, please complete our contact form or call us at 781-591-0752.

Consider These Three Things To Succeed with Report Automation

Reporting, some folks refer to it as a necessary evil, and others call it a fundamental tool for business. No matter what your thoughts are on the matter, if you are reading this, it is because your reporting efforts are taking too much time, costing too much money, or are getting too complex. Hence, you have decided to look into efficient alternatives to make your organization’s reporting efforts easier. You may not know where to start or what to do, but you are not alone.

Part of my responsibilities in my current role is to help surpass current operational efficiency while contributing to the organization’s overall commitment to our customer needs and goals. Our reporting mission is not to provide a one-size-fits-all type of report but one that is carefully customized to each of our clients. This means that I am responsible for designing, developing, and testing our report automation efforts for every account that we manage.

Since I have already started with this project, I decided to share a some of my experiences in the hopes that they either guide you or help you save time. The main thing you must know is that you do not need a massive budget to make reporting automation work. You can make your automated reports as elaborate or as simple as you wish, and your outcome can be a very cool dashboard or a very insightful Excel file. Therefore, because the possibilities are endless, I decided to make these tips as general as possible while sometimes leveraging two of my daily go-to data sources to illustrate some of my points. Without further ado, these are the three key things you should consider:

1. What are you trying to accomplish?

The design of your automated report is going to be directly proportional to the desired goal you wish to accomplish. There are several approaches to pull data, analyze it, and present it. Thus, an automated report whose goal is to minimize reporting turnaround times could look and interact substantially differently than one that aims to maximize accuracy or that will interact as a dashboard-like output. Therefore, in order to build the solution that fit your needs, you and your team need to ask: “What are we trying to accomplish? How are we measuring success?”

The most common answers to this question fall within the following verticals:

• Turnaround Efficiency
• Accuracy
• Compliance & Monitoring of KPIs
• Data Integration

Moreover, the more granular these answers are, the more effortless it will be to develop an efficient solution. It is important to understand that apart from the goal, a clear understanding of all team members and stakeholders of how the final output should look, feel, display, etc. will also be of tremendous value in the development stage.

2. Have you considered how business requirements may impact your report in the future?

Business is ever changing and, consequently, reporting is as well. When making the design, potential short-term and long-term changes must be considered and consulting with someone who has prior experience with the particular stakeholder or industry may be very helpful to get a sense of how regularly and what type of changes are usually experienced. For instance, in the PPC space, stakeholders often shift their strategies, which entails launching, pausing, and replacing campaigns, ad groups, copy, and search terms – this can happen at any given point, and thus, reports need to be modified to display the active data. Proactively understanding changing business environments and integrating these into the foundational design of an automated report provide you with the flexibility and dynamism to adapt to unforeseen changes.

There is always going to be an unavoidable instance when new development efforts will have to take place to cater to the evolving needs in question. In prior opportunities, even with the most thorough design and use-case scenario preparation, I have witnessed how new business needs and business questions mean almost an entirely new deployment of the reporting infrastructure. Therefore, I always recommend thoroughly documenting the design process, specifically, any unique features or needs that have to be implemented, so that when a request for a major redesign comes in, you and your team will be able to leverage what you or someone else has done in the past. This can contribute to significant time savings and a much more tailored solution.

Keep in mind that with the documentation process, you should be able to respond to these questions for any step of your report:

• Are all steps documented in full detail? If we were to revisit this design in six months, would we be able to remember where we left off?
• Is there any particular step that is particular to this report? If so, have we documented how we overcame this challenge?
• Is there another alternative to get the same result? If there is, have we tested it to determine which one may be better?
• What tests can we carry out to ensure the design works?
• After the data analysis, are there any gaps or questions left unanswered? (If your answer is yes, you should revisit the drawing board and do the necessary to close the gaps.)
• Could you explain your design with a story? (This will help you see if your data relationship makes sense.)

3. Have you looked into the quality, structure, complexities, and limitations of your data source(s)?

According to Google Trends, over the past five years, the number of searches for “Data Quality”, “Big Data”, and “Data Cleansing” have increased by 50% year over year (YoY). We all have heard about the power and uses that data can have in the workplace, social media, sports, human behavior analysis, etc. Most of us have seen some type of dashboard and even heard of visualization tools such as Tableau or Google Data Studio. However, not everyone knows the work that it takes to gather the data to use these tools properly.

One of the reasons for this is that every company has its own strategy and design for their OLAP cubes, databases, overall data sources, etc. Another reason is that none of the processes that happen behind the scenes are as engaging as a dashboard. Nevertheless, if you are looking to eventually have or maximize the power of these tools, you must not ignore your data sources.

To illustrate my point, let’s talk about two data sources that our reports tend to leverage: Google Analytics and Google AdWords. While in essence, these two are complimentary platforms and were built by the same company, they do not operate equally in a number of different scenarios, and each presents its own unique challenges. Thus, if you were asked to build an automated report that used both of these sources to show a client how his or her PPC and SEO efforts were performing, how would you be able to seamlessly integrate both of them for your stakeholder?

You have to create or leverage a data relationship. There are several ways to make this work, but I recommend using the following questions as a general guideline to help you determine your next steps:

• Are the data sources inclusive? If so, how are they linked together?
• What metrics are you trying to report on? Is there a possibility that both sources contain the same metric with similar or different results? If they are different, which one will you choose?
• Are there any primary/unique ids that you could leverage to get more granular attribution? (I highly discourage anyone from using alphabetic fields as IDs to create data relationships.)
• Are there any fields that only one of the sources has that could impact the quality or accuracy of your results?
• How will you test the accuracy of the information? (This is particularly important since tools, like Google Adwords, change throughout the day and can generally present results that differ by up to 5%, depending on when you pull the data.)
• Is there any manual entry involved with the process? What steps can you take to minimize human error?

Once you are able to determine the answers to these questions, you will be able to design an action plan that minimizes the vulnerabilities of each source. Finally, in some instances, you will find no relationships in the data, and you must find a way to create one. For instance, if you added to your report additional information from an organic rankings tool and/or social media performance, there will most likely not be a link between these sources and Google Adwords or Analytics. If you find yourself in this situation, you will then have to build a layer where you integrate these sources as you see fit, keeping in mind that, although there is no nexus amongst themselves, they all still are results that pertain to the same client or stakeholder.

I hope that you are able to leverage this information into your reporting automation efforts. From personal experience, being prepared to address these questions before diving into a report automation project will help you maximize the efforts invested, create a better final product, and facilitate management discussions so that you can move seamlessly with your process. Remember that you should always have a defined goal, be able to document and explain your design considering an ever-changing business environment, and finally understand the peculiarities of the sources you are leveraging for the report.

Happy Reporting!

How Removing Silos Between Your Marketing And Technical Teams Can Help You Succeed In The SEM Space.

Search Engines are becoming smarter. Google, for instance, has recently shifted their model from connecting users to high-quality results, to also becoming a knowledge base in and of itself. The emergence of big data, predictive analytics, answer boxes, and knowledge graphs into Google Search has resulted in customizable results that aim to be more relevant to each user. While these improvements create significant value for the user, they represent a significant threat to companies and advertisers seeking to rank in Google results or advertise through AdWords. Corporations and advertisers have no choice but to adapt to these changes, to strengthen and continuously improve their digital assets to preserve their relevancy in the search and pay-per-click space.

Most parties looking to rank in or to conquer the SEO space aim to “beat the system” by – in other words, by increasing their monetary efforts to send out a message with the hopes that it is either relevant to an audience, or to Google. While that may be a fair strategy for some players, the key to success in this space does not originate solely from outreach, but rather from the alignment of your organization’s marketing and technical teams and the maximization of existing digital assets.

For instance, one of the main problems in the SEO space is digital dilution, which occurs when a site releases a high volume of uncategorized, unrelated or non-compliant content. This content can actually impact your organization’s website negatively, especially when the underlying code for the content is non-compliant with current content best practices or trends.

If releasing content keeps your company’s site relevant, how can new content actually hurt it? Well, this is not always the case, but the problem for most parties is that they consider their technical and marketing teams completely separate entities. Thus, the goals for each are independent and sometimes conflicting. For instance, let’s say that your organization is planning to launch a new website, so the organization gathers the marketing and development team. Since the goal is to create a new, high-impact website, do you think that their priorities will be the same?

Typically, the answer is no. Even as a developer and a search engine marketer myself, I often struggle to align my technical and marketing priorities in a scenario like this. The problem relies on proper communication and joint goals. However, the lack of communication does not fall on either team’s plate, but rather, a much broader underlying management practice towards IT workers that should not be surprising – some managers simply do not know how to manage a technical team. In late 2015 TinyPulse, an employment engagement platform published surprising results. Only 19% of all technical workers in the United States are satisfied with their jobs (versus a 22% national average).

The surveyor concluded that amongst the top reasons for their dissatisfaction, the one that stood out most is the lack of alignment within the company – meaning that these folks are unable to find where their roles fit in with the organization’s values, goals, etc. The second most common reason is a poor connection with their teammates – about 47% of surveyed IT employees claimed to have strong relationships with their coworkers, but in other industries, this number jumped to 56%.  Thus, your organization may comprise of a very talented technical team of both marketers and technical employees who are not reaching their full potential because of a lack of inclusion, aligned goals, and stronger bonds. It is up to your organization to build the bridges for mutual collaboration, because without it, each team will continue to work under their silo rather than a mutually defined goal.

Without alignment and inclusion, your organization will not be able to attain “win – win” outcomes that benefit not only the collaboration of these teams, but of the entire organization. An effective digital marketing campaign is relying equally on the messaging and on how the message is served, and the results are measured in increased leads and sales.  It is just that simple.  In the Search Engine Marketing space it is not your strategies that will not allow you to conquer this space, but rather the prevalence of communication and collaboration between your  teams.

I am a huge believer in professional ambidexterity. Every opportunity that I have had to expand my technical or my marketing knowledge has only made me a better professional and equips me with better contributions and insights for our clients. At Synapse SEM, we practice the same philosophy as a key component of our culture, and we continue to be successful where others fail because we understand the technical and marketing needs of the industry. As Google continues to update its ranking metrics, can assure you that by building a united digital marketing front, your organization will be able to succeed no matter how complicated or competitive the space becomes.

4 Ways the Removal of Right-Hand Rail Ads Impacts PPC

In late February of this year, Google confirmed that they will no longer be serving PPC ads in the right hand rail of the search results. While this came as a shock to many, it is something Google has been testing since 2010 and just recently decided to roll out permanently. The online giant has a long standing history of discreetly testing out new updates to search engine results, and this one was no different as an anonymous Google employee leaked the permanent change to the media on February 19.

So what exactly does this change mean for paid search advertisers? What shift in results can digital marketers and advertisers expect to see over the next several months as this change in the search engine landscape rolls out? Below are 4 potential shifts to look out for with this recent update in the Google search results.

1) CPCs Might Increase

Over the next several months as more marketers and clients alike begin to notice the change in Google search results, the competition for the top 3-4 PPC search results is going to gain momentum. It is common knowledge in search that users tend to not spend a lot of time scrolling down to look at results below the fold, so marketers are going to be increasing bids to battle it out for the top paid search slots. There are a couple different scenarios to consider here. CPCs have the potential to increase as marketers compete to own those top spots. Alternatively, it is possible that Google may change the minimum Ad Rank requirements so that ads are showing more often and rotate in more evenly. Some of our clients have seen around a 5% increase in CPCs since the new update rolled out over the last couple months. We will be interested to observe how CPC shifts over the next few months after advertisers have had more time to settle in with this particular update.

2) Impression Share Could Be Harder to Maintain and QS May Carry More Weight

As more advertisers notice the change in SERP results, they will begin competing for the top 4 paid search spots which may make it more difficult for advertisers to maintain stronger impression share on their core terms. How will Google determine which ads to rotate in to those top 4 spots? How will that impact impression share? Will it be tougher to maintain strong impression share for your top terms or will Google loosen up the criteria for Ad Rank and rotate competitors in more evenly? One certainty here is that it will be critical to re-evaluate Quality Score on your most important terms to set yourself up for success with all the unknowns of Google’s next steps.

3) More Advertisers Will Likely Be Shifting into PPC

With this new change rolling out, the amount of paid ad space available on the SERP has decreased from up to 11 down to 7. There is, however, one additional spot available at the top of the page for a total of 4 paid search slots, as opposed to 3 in the past. What does this mean for SEO results? They will be pushed further down the page, bringing a higher number of SEO results below fold. Because of this shift in SEO positioning (and drop in traffic) more advertisers will likely be looking into setting up their own paid search campaigns to compete for the top page spots. This may end up adding another layer of competition to the paid search space, which could also have an impact both on CPC and impression share.

4) ecommerce Advertisers Will Likely Invest More Heavily in PLAs, and non-ecommerce Advertisers Will Be Awaiting Their Solution

While right hand rail paid search ads are disappearing completely, Google has confirmed that this change will not impact the Knowledge Panel or the Product Listing Ads on the side rail of the SERP. The strong positioning of PLA ads is optimal for ecommerce companies and retailers who are likely already heavily investing in PLA advertising. This is great news for ecommerce businesses, but there is no alternative solution for either B2B or B2C companies that do not have specific products for sale on their site.

There is currently a lot of speculation circling around the paid search world about how this major shift in search engine results is going to impact marketers and advertisers. Ultimately, the impact will depend upon how advertisers react to this change in landscape. Will they get more aggressive with bids right away, driving up CPCs? Will they take a step back to revise their keyword set and max out impression share on their most efficient terms? Whichever direction the reaction trends, marketers should take a step back to re-evaluate strategy and results to make sure no major dips in performance have occurred.

Some different types of analysis that may be helpful include segmenting traffic and leads by ‘top of page’ results versus ‘other’ both before and after the update to see if there is cause for worry.  Advertisers will also want to look into improving Quality Score since it may end up carrying even more weight. To improve QS, advertisers can try segmenting keywords out into more granular ad groups and looking into ad copy and landing page content that is more relevant to the keywords within those given ad groups.  To improve expected CTR, try testing queries on high volume terms to see how competitors are positioning themselves and adjust your copy to be more in line with the competition. Is there room to broaden your customer base? Are there unnecessary qualifiers currently in place within your ad copy? Improving overall QS should help minimize the impact of potential CPC increases, and hopefully lead to better overall positioning with negligible impact on CPCs.