Search Lately Issue 127

ISSUE 127 – 14th MARCH 2014

Google Consumer Rating Annotations Is Now Available in AdWords This week, Google announced the roll out of Consumer Ratings Annotations in Adwords. The new offering for search ads will provide detiled consumer opinion data that will highlight one or more strongly rated aspects of your business in your search ads. For example, if you're an insurance company, this annotation may be focused on claims handling. If you’re quick service restaurant, it may highlight your customer service rating, or rewards program..

Google reports early testing have shown that consumer ratings annotations can increase clickthrought rates (CTR) by 10% on average. The ratings data is pulled from the Google Consumer Surveys (GCS) platform, which launched in 2012. Surveys questions are typically served in pop-ups as paywall alternatives on publisher sites. Each rating is based on an average of 1,000 consumer opinions.

Shared By James Lin Follow the link for more details: http://bit.ly/1cTjfzz

SMX West Highlights With the conclusion of California's Search Marketing Expo West this week it seems like the perfect time to provide a roundup of some of the key points from the three day event's influential speakers. Greg Sterling of Sterling Market Intelligence touched upon mobile's influence on marketing, predicting that wearable technology will help us to follow consumers in the "real world", to the point of being able to track whether a person walks into a store after exposure to a campaign. Lisa Buyer (The Buyer Group) suggested that 'social […] is really the people's vote, where in search it can be Google's vote', as well as suggesting that a post that performs well in social is likely to be successful in search if optimised correctly. And finally Rand Fishkin reflected on the rise of "recovery-based" SEO in light of Google's surge in penalisations.