We hope you are in good health. Here are some of the major SEO news updates of the week you need to know:
Search Related Updates And News From Major Search Engines
12 Types of Manual Action Penalties Adds Google
Google has introduced 12 new types of manual action penalties that contain violations of Google News and Google Discover policies. This means that a website could potentially receive a manual penalty for violations of News and Discover policies. Some manual penalties are specific to News, some are specific to Discover, and some involve News and Discover.
Now Google Passage Ranking is Live in the United States
On February 10, 2021, Danny Sullivan tweeted Passage Ranking is live for English-language queries in the United States. Google’s Martin Splitt has also represented his insight on how Passage Ranking as a ranking factor will impact SEO professionals in this column originally published November 19, 2020.
Google Image Search Upgrade Minimize Duplicate Image Results
In November 2020, Google announced on Twitter that it had released an update to Google Image Search that reduces duplicative images in the image search results: “We made an improvement to Image Search to reduce duplicate images so that we can display others that are relevant yet visually distinct.” Google also added, “we hope this improvement, which we introduced in November, helps everyone better make use of Google Images to be inspired and informed as they search visually.”
Google My Business Includes Messaging to Desktop Interface
Google My Business introduced a powerful messaging feature that puts you in touch with your customers when they need you the most. This will make easier and faster to type on a full-size keyboard when responding to any customer requests. Earlier, messaging was available through the Google My Business mobile app, but not within the Google My Business desktop interface.
Google Officially Shows Your Business Years
Google announced a new label of “years in business” for those businesses that want to show how many years they are operating the business within the Google Search local pack. Google said you need to provide the open date in your Google My Business profile. For this, you have to log into your Google My Business account, clicking on your location, then selecting the “info” option from the menu and then click on “add opening date.”
PPC Related Updates And News
Google Ads Lead Forms Turns Users Without Click-Through
Google said advertisers can manually download the last 30 days of lead data directly from Google Ads or create a webhook to have leads moved directly into a CRM. This lead form extension may be beneficial to some industries or target keywords that are further down the funnel.
Microsoft Ads Will Replace Manual CPC with Enhanced CPC
Microsoft official announcement stated “Starting in March 2021 and continuing through April 2021, all existing search, shopping, and Dynamic Search Ads campaigns without any automated bidding strategies in place will be automatically migrated to Enhanced CPC. All ad groups and keywords will also be set to inherit bidding from their parent Campaign.” By 5th of April 2021, new campaigns will no longer get the option of Manual CPC.
