February 2021 - Latest News, Headlines at Peter Zmijewski

Bing Webmaster Tools adds crawl requests, crawl errors & indexed pages to performance report

February 24, 2021 news

You can now see crawling and indexing data directly in the search performance report. Microsoft Bing has added some new metrics to the search performance report within Bing Webmaster Tools. The new metrics include crawl requests, crawl errors, and indexed pages — all of which are not really directly related to the performance of your search results in Microsoft Bing. Frank Sandtmann, a German SEO consultant, notified us of this new feature this morning and it is indeed new. We do not see an announcement about this from Microsoft. Nor…

Bing

Bing Also Testing Google’s Search Design Interface

February 22, 2021 news

Days after Yahoo was caught testing a Google search design interface, Bing is also caught testing it. Ruben Gomez spotted yet another interesting test, this one by Bing, testing a similar user interface to Google’s default search interface. Yahoo did the same thing earlier this week, where they took a very similar Google design approach and tested it for some of their users. Now it seems Bing is testing that same Google search interface as well. Here is a picture of the Bing design test: Here is a picture of what a typical…

Marketing

Breaking down President Biden’s data-driven social media strategy

February 20, 2021 news

Biden social media director Sarah Galvez explains how Measure Studio and Monday.com gave her team the tools they needed to drive a winning strategy. Just days before the 2020 Presidential election, we reported that Joe Biden was outperforming Donald Trump on social media by certain key metrics. Despite the penetrating volume of Trump’s Twitter feed, Biden was earning more interactions per tweet, and far more interactions per user. Not only was Biden winning on Twitter, but his campaign was making an impact on YouTube and even on Twitch. And, of course, he…

google

Google brings Display ads to attribution reports as an open beta

February 19, 2021 news

Now, advertisers can see Display ads alongside search and YouTube. Google has added Display ads to its Google Ads attribution reporting as an open beta, the company announced Thursday. Last year, the company streamlined its attribution reporting and included YouTube ads to it, also in beta. How to opt-in. Eligible advertisers can opt-in to Display ads in attribution reports by going to the Measurement > Attribution section of Google Ads. After opting in, Display ads will be shown in all attribution reports, along with search ads (including Shopping), and, if they have opted into it, YouTube ads. The reports. Attribution…

IBM Will Reach Net Zero Greenhouse Emissions by 2030

February 17, 2021 news

IBM has set a major new goal, planning on reaching net zero greenhouse emissions by 2030. Companies large and small are making climate change an important part of their agenda. Especially with the Biden administration bringing the US back into the Paris Agreement, companies can no longer afford to go about business as usual without also factoring in their environmental impact. IBM is the latest company committed to addressing climate change, with plans to reach net zero greenhouse emissions by 2030. “I am proud that IBM is leading the way…

SEO

Ask an SMXpert — Advanced Technical SEO for Bing

February 16, 2021 news

SMXpert and Microsoft Senior Program Manager Frederic Dubut answers questions on how Bing handles redirects, crawl budgets and more. The Ask an SMXpert series continues the question-and-answer (Q&A) segment held during sessions at SMX Advanced 2018 in Seattle. Today’s Q&A is from the Advanced Technical SEO: Page Speed, Site Migrations and Crawling session with Frederic Dubut from Microsoft/Bing. Question: If we have a bunch of new content we want to index but are worried we don’t have enough crawl budget, which should we do first: focus on increasing crawl or indexing the new…

SEM

Microsoft Ads to replace Manual CPC with Enhanced CPC by end of April

February 13, 2021 news

Microsoft Advertising says eCPC increases conversions while lowering CPA, but some advertisers worry about loss of control. Microsoft will transition all search, shopping, and Dynamic Search Ads campaigns that do not have automated bidding strategies to Enhanced CPC (eCPC) beginning in March. “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,”…

google

Google officially displays years in business in local pack

February 11, 2021 news

After several months of testing, Google has officially launched this new label that shows how many years your business has been in operation. Google quietly announced that the “years in business” label is now live for businesses that want to display how many years they are in business within the Google Search local pack. What it looks like. Here is a screen shot of my business, RustyBrick, showing the 25+ years in business label in a local pack listing within the Google Search results: How do you get this label. Google said you need…

SEO

CRO tools to help you boost your SEO efforts

February 9, 2021 news

Is your site getting a lot of traffic? If yes, great! But your work is not over. Contributor Stephanie LeVonne says it’s time to implement a conversion rate optimization campaign. Here are four tools to help. Any savvy search engine optimization specialist (SEO) knows website optimization never truly ends. Just when you think you’ve done it all, Google decides to update their algorithm or roll out new organic (and paid) features to keep you on your toes. Plus, your website is changing all the time, too, and for this reason,…