SEO
How To Use IndexNow API With Python For Bulk Indexing
IndexNow is a protocol developed by Microsoft Bing and adopted by Yandex that enables webmasters and SEO pros to easily notify search engines when a webpage has been updated via an API.
And today, Microsoft announced that it is making the protocol easier to implement by ensuring that submitted URLs are shared between search engines.
Given its positive implications and the promise of a faster indexing experience for publishers, the IndexNow API should be on every SEO professional’s radar.
Using Python for automating URL submission to the IndexNow API or making an API request to the IndexNow API for bulk URL indexing can make managing IndexNow more efficient for you.
In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to do just that, with step-by-step instructions for using the IndexNow API to submit URLs to Microsoft Bing in bulk with Python.
Note: The IndexNow API is similar to Google’s Indexing API with only one difference: the Google Indexing API is only for job advertisements or broadcasting web pages that contain a video object within it.
Google announced that they will test the IndexNow API but hasn’t updated us since.
Bulk Indexing Using IndexNow API with Python: Getting Started
Below are the necessities to understand and implement the IndexNow API tutorial.
Below are the Python packages and libraries that will be used for the Python IndexNow API tutorial.
- Advertools (must).
- Pandas (must).
- Requests (must).
- Time (optional).
- JSON (optional).
Before getting started, reading the basics can help you to understand this IndexNow API and Python tutorial better. We will be using an API Key and a .txt file to provide authentication along with specific HTTP Headers.
1. Import The Python Libraries
To use the necessary Python libraries, we will use the “import” command.
- Advertools will be used for sitemap URL extraction.
- Requests will be used for making the GET and POST requests.
- Pandas will be used for taking the URLs in the sitemap into a list object.
- The “time” module is to prevent a “Too much request” error with the “sleep()” method.
- JSON is for possibly modifying the POST JSON object if needed.
Below, you will find all of the necessary import lines for the IndexNow API tutorial.
import advertools as adv import pandas as pd import requests import json import time
2. Extracting The Sitemap URLs With Python
To extract the URLs from a sitemap file, different web scraping methods and libraries can be used such as Requests or Scrapy.
But to keep things simple and efficient, I will use my favorite Python SEO package – Advertools.
With only a single line of code, all of the URLs within a sitemap can be extracted.
sitemap_urls = adv.sitemap_to_df("https://www.example.com/sitemap_index.xml")
The “sitemap_to_df” method of the Advertools can extract all the URLs and other sitemap-related tags such as “lastmod” or “priority.”
Below, you can see the output of the “adv.sitemap_to_df” command.
Sitemap URL Extraction can be done via Advertools’ “sitemap_to_df” method.All of the URLs and dates are specified within the “sitemap_urls” variable.
Since sitemaps are useful sources for search engines and SEOs, Advertools’ sitemap_to_df method can be used for many different tasks including a Sitemap Python Audit.
But that’s a topic for another time.
3. Take The URLs Into A List Object With “to_list()”
Python’s Pandas library has a method for taking a data frame column (data series) into a list object, to_list().
Below is an example usage:
sitemap_urls["loc"].to_list()
Below, you can see the result:
Pandas’ “to_list” method can be used with Advertools for listing the URLs.All URLs within the sitemap are in a Python list object.
4. Understand The URL Syntax Of IndexNow API Of Microsoft Bing
Let’s take a look at the URL syntax of the IndexNow API.
Here’s an example:
https://<searchengine>/indexnow?url=url-changed&key=your-key
The URL syntax represents the variables and their relations to each other within the RFC 3986 standards.
- The <searchengine> represents the search engine name that you will use the IndexNow API for.
- “?url=” parameter is to determine the URL that will be submitted to the search engine via IndexNow API.
- “&key=” is the API Key that will be used within the IndexNow API.
- “&keyLocation=” is to provide an authenticity that shows that you are the owner of the website that IndexNow API will be used for.
The “&keyLocation” will bring us to the API Key and its “.txt” version.
5. Gather The API Key For IndexNow And Upload It To The Root
You’ll need a valid key to use the IndexNow API.
Use this link to generate the Microsoft Bing IndexNow API Key.
There is no limit for generating the IndexNow API Key.Clicking the “Generate” button creates an IndexNow API Key.
When you click on the download button, it will download the “.txt” version of the IndexNow API Key.
IndexNow API Key can be generated by Microsoft Bing’s stated address.
Downloaded IndexNow API Key as txt file.The TXT version of the API key will be the file name and as well as within the text file.
IndexNow API Key in TXT File should be the same with the name of the file, and the actual API Key value.The next step is uploading this TXT file to the root of the website’s server.
Since I use FileZilla for my FTP, I have uploaded it easily to my web server’s root.
By putting the .txt file into the web server’s root folder, the IndexNow API setup can be completed.The next step is performing a simple for a loop example for submitting all of the URLs within the sitemap.
6. Submit The URLs Within The Sitemap With Python To IndexNow API
To submit a single URL to the IndexNow, you can use a single “requests.get()” instance. But to make it more useful, we will use a for a loop.
To submit URLs in bulk to the IndexNow API with Python, follow the steps below:
- Create a key variable with the IndexNow API Key value.
- Replace the <searchengine> section with the search engine that you want to submit URLs (Microsoft Bing, or Yandex, for now).
- Assign all of the URLs from the sitemap within a list to a variable.
- Use the “txt” file within the root of the web server with its URL value.
- Place the URL, key, and key location URL within the string manipulation value.
- Start your for a loop, and use the “requests.get()” for all of the URLs within the sitemap.
Below, you can see the implementation:
key = "22bc7c564b334f38b0b1ed90eec8f2c5" url = sitemap_urls["loc"].to_list()
for i in url:
endpoint = f"https://bing.com/indexnow?url={i}&key={key}&keyLocation={location}"
response = requests.get(endpoint)
print(i)
print(endpoint)
print(response.status_code, response.content)
#time.sleep(5)
If you’re concerned about sending too many requests to the IndexNow API, you can use the Python time module to make the script wait between every request.
Here you can see the output of the script:
The empty string as the request’s response body represents the success of the IndexNow API request according to Microsoft Bing’s IndexNow documentation.The 200 Status Code means that the request was successful.
With the for a loop, I have submitted 194 URLs to Microsoft Bing.
According to the IndexNow Documentation, the HTTP 200 Response Code signals that the search engine is aware of the change in the content or the new content. But it doesn’t necessarily guarantee indexing.
For instance, I have used the same script for another website. After 120 seconds, Microsoft Bing says that 31 results are found. And conveniently, it shows four pages.
The only problem is that on the first page there are only two results, and it says that the URLs are blocked by Robots.txt even if the blocking was removed before submission.
This can happen if the robots.txt was changed to remove some URLs before using the IndexNow API because it seems that Bing does not check the Robots.txt again.
Thus, if you previously blocked them, they try to index your website but still use the previous version of the robots.txt file.
It shows what will happen if you use IndexNow API by blocking Bingbot via Robots.txt.On the second page, there is only one result:
Microsoft Bing might use a different indexation and pagination method than Google. The second page shows only one among the 31 results.On the third page, there is no result, and it shows the Microsoft Bing Translate for translating the string within the search bar.
It shows sometimes, Microsoft Bing infers the “site” search operator as a part of the query.When I checked Google Analytics, it shows that Bing still hadn’t crawled the website or indexed it. I know this is true as I also checked the log files.
Below, you will see the Bing Webmaster Tool’s report for the example website:
It says that I submitted 38 URLs.
The next step will involve the bulk request with the POST Method and a JSON object.
7. Perform An HTTP Post Request To The IndexNow API
To perform an HTTP post request to the IndexNow API for a set of URLs, a JSON object should be used with specific properties.
- Host property represents the search engine hostname.
- Key represents the API Key.
- Key represents the location of the API Key’s txt file within the web server.
- urlList represents the URL set that will be submitted to the IndexNow API.
- Headers represent the POST Request Headers that will be used which are “Content-type” and “charset.”
Since this is a POST request, the “requests.post” will be used instead of the “requests.get().”
Below, you will find an example of a set of URLs submitted to Microsoft Bing’s IndexNow API.
data = {
"host": "www.bing.com",
"key": "22bc7c564b334f38b0b1ed90eec8f2c5",
"keyLocation": "https://www.example.com/22bc7c564b334f38b0b1ed90eec8f2c5.txt",
"urlList": [
'https://www.example.com/technical-seo/http-header/',
'https://www.example.com/python-seo/nltk/lemmatize',
'https://www.example.com/pagespeed/broser-hints/preload',
'https://www.example.com/python-seo/nltk/stemming',
'https://www.example.com/python-seo/categorize-queries/',
'https://www.example.com/python-seo/nltk/tokenization',
'https://www.example.com/review/oncrawl/',
'https://www.example.com/technical-seo/hreflang/',
'https://www.example.com/technical-seo/multilingual-seo/'
]
}
headers = {"Content-type":"application/json", "charset":"utf-8"}
r = requests.post("https://bing.com/", data=data, headers=headers)
r.status_code, r.content
In the example above, we have performed a POST Request to index a set of URLs.
We have used the “data” object for the “data parameter of requests.post,” and the headers object for the “headers” parameter.
Since we POST a JSON object, the request should have the “content-type: application/json” key and value with the “charset:utf-8.”
After I make the POST request, 135 seconds later, my live logfile analysis dashboard started to show the immediate hits from the Bingbot.
8. Create Custom Function For IndexNow API To Make Time
Creating a custom function for IndexNow API is useful to decrease the time that will be spent on the code preparation.
Thus, I have created two different custom Python functions to use the IndexNow API for bulk requests and individual requests.
Below, you will find an example for only the bulk requests to the IndexNow API.
The custom function for bulk requests is called “submit_url_set.”
Even if you just fill in the parameters, still you will be able to use it properly.
def submit_url_set(set_:list, key, location, host="https://www.bing.com", headers={"Content-type":"application/json", "charset":"utf-8"}):
key = "22bc7c564b334f38b0b1ed90eec8f2c5"
set_ = sitemap_urls["loc"].to_list()
data = {
"host": "www.bing.com",
"key": key,
"keyLocation": "https://www.example.com/22bc7c564b334f38b0b1ed90eec8f2c5.txt",
"urlList": set_
}
r = requests.post(host, data=data, headers=headers)
return r.status_code
An explanation of this custom function:
- The “Set_” parameter is to provide a list of URLs.
- “Key” parameter is to provide an IndexNow API Key.
- “Location” parameter is to provide the location of the IndexNow API Key’s txt file within the web server.
- “Host” is to provide the search engine host address.
- “Headers” is to provide the headers that are necessary for the IndexNow API.
I have defined some of the parameters with default values such as “host” for Microsoft Bing. If you want to use it for Yandex, you will need to state it while calling the function.
Below is an example usage:
submit_url_set(set_=sitemap_urls["loc"].to_list(), key="22bc7c564b334f38b0b1ed90eec8f2c5", location="https://www.example.com/22bc7c564b334f38b0b1ed90eec8f2c5.txt")
If you want to extract sitemap URLs with a different method, or if you want to use the IndexNow API for a different URL set, you will need to change “set_” parameter value.
Below, you will see an example of the Custom Python function for the IndexNow API for only individual requests.
def submit_url(url, location, key = "22bc7c564b334f38b0b1ed90eec8f2c5"):
key = "22bc7c564b334f38b0b1ed90eec8f2c5"
url = sitemap_urls["loc"].to_list()
for i in url:
endpoint = f"https://bing.com/indexnow?url={i}&key={key}&keyLocation={location}"
response = requests.get(endpoint)
print(i)
print(endpoint)
print(response.status_code, response.content)
#time.sleep(5)
Since this is for a loop, you can submit more URLs one by one. The search engine can prioritize these types of requests differently.
Some of the bulk requests will include non-important URLs, the individual requests might be seen as more reasonable.
If you want to include the sitemap URL extraction within the function, you should include Advertools naturally into the functions themselves.
Tips For Using The IndexNow API With Python
An Overview of How The IndexNow API Works, Capabilities & Uses
- The IndexNow API doesn’t guarantee that your website or the URLs that you submitted will be indexed.
- You should only submit URLs that are new or for which the content has changed.
- The IndexNow API impacts the crawl budget.
- Microsoft Bing has a threshold for the URL Content Quality and Calculation of the Crawl Need for a URL. If the submitted URL is not good enough, they may not crawl it.
- You can submit up to 10,000 URLs.
- The IndexNow API suggests submitting URLs even if the website is small.
- Submitting the same pages many times within a day can block the IndexNow API from crawling the redundant URLs or the source.
- The IndexNow API is useful for sites where the content changes frequently, like every 10 minutes.
- IndexNow API is useful for pages that are gone and are returning a 404 response code. It lets the search engine know that the URLs are gone.
- IndexNow API can be used for notifying of new 301 or 302 redirects.
- The 200 Status Response Code means that the search engine is aware of the submitted URL.
- The 429 Status Code means that you made too many requests to the IndexNow API.
- If you put a “txt” file that contains the IndexNow API Key into a subfolder, the IndexNow API can be used only for that subfolder.
- If you have two different CMS, you can use two different IndexNow API Keys for two different site sections
- Subdomains need to use a different IndexNow API key.
- Even if you already use a sitemap, using IndexNow API is useful because it efficiently tells the search engines of website changes and reduces unnecessary bot crawling.
- All search engines that adopt the IndexNow API (Microsoft Bing and Yandex) share the URLs that are submitted between each other.
IndexNow API Documentation and usage tips can be found above.In this IndexNow API tutorial and guideline with Python, we have examined a new search engine technology.
Instead of waiting to be crawled, publishers can notify the search engines to crawl when there is a need.
IndexNow reduces the use of search engine data center resources, and now you know how to use Python to make the process more efficient, too.
More resources:
An Introduction To Python & Machine Learning For Technical SEO
How to Use Python to Monitor & Measure Website Performance
Advanced Technical SEO: A Complete Guide
Featured Image: metamorworks/Shutterstock
SEO
Expert Embedding Techniques for SEO Success
AI Overviews are here, and they’re making a big impact in the world of SEO. Are you up to speed on how to maximize their impact?
Watch on-demand as we dive into the fascinating world of Google AI Overviews and their functionality, exploring the concept of embeddings and demystifying the complex processes behind them.
We covered which measures play a crucial role in how Google AI assesses the relevance of different pieces of content, helping to rank and select the most pertinent information for AI-generated responses.
You’ll see:
- An understanding of the technical side of embeddings & how they work, enabling efficient information retrieval and comparison.
- Insights into AI Content curation, including the criteria and algorithms used to rank and choose the most relevant snippets for AI-generated overviews.
- A visualization of the step-by-step process of how AI overviews are constructed, with a clear perspective on the decision-making process behind AI-generated content.
With Scott Stouffer from Market Brew, we explored their AI Overviews Visualizer, a tool that deconstructs AI Overviews and provides an inside look at how Snippets and AI Overviews are curated.
If you’re looking to clarify misconceptions around AI, or looking to face the challenge of optimizing your own content for the AI Overview revolution, then be sure to watch this webinar.
View the slides below, or check out the full presentation for all the details.
Join Us For Our Next Webinar!
[Expert Panel] How Agencies Leverage AI Tools To Drive ROI
Join us as we discuss the importance of AI to your performance as an agency or small business, and how you can use it successfully.
SEO
7 Strategies to Lower Cost-Per-Lead
SEO for personal injury law firms is notorious for how expensive and competitive it can be. Even with paid ads, it’s common for every click from the ad to your website to cost hundreds of dollars:
When spending this kind of money per click, the cost of gaining new cases can quickly skyrocket. Since SEO focuses on improving your visibility in the unpaid areas of search engines, you can cut costs and get more leads if you’re savvy enough.
Here are the strategies I’ve used to help new and boutique injury and accident law firms compete with the big guns for a fraction of the cost.
Recommendation
Unlike many other local service businesses, personal injury law firms need to work harder to earn trust and credibility online.
This applies to earning trust from humans and search engines alike. Google has a 170-page document called the Search Quality Rater Guidelines. This document contains two frameworks law firms can use to help Google and website visitors trust them more.
The first is “your money or your life,” or YMYL. Google uses this term to describe topics that may present a high risk of harm to searchers. Generally, any health, finances, safety, or welfare information falls into this category. Legal information is also a YMYL topic since acting on the wrong information could cause serious damage or harm to searchers.
The second framework is EEAT, which stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.
This framework applies more broadly to all industries and is about sharing genuine information written by experts and authorities for a given topic. Both YMYL and EEAT consider the extent to which content is accurate, honest, safe, and reliable, with the ultimate goal of delivering trustworthy information.
Here are the things I implement for my personal injury clients as a priority to improve the trustworthiness of their online presence:
- Prominently display star ratings from third-party platforms, like Google or FaceBook reviews.
- Show your accreditations, certifications, awards, and the stats on cases you’ve won.
- If government-issued ratings or licenses apply to your practice areas, show those too.
- Add contact information like your phone number and address in the footer of every page.
- Share details of every member of your firm, highlighting their expertise and cases they’ve won.
- Add links to your professional profiles online, including social media and law-related listings.
- Include photos of your team and offices, results, case studies, and success stories.
Generally speaking, your Google Business listing can account for over 50% of the leads you get from search engines. That’s because it can display prominently in the maps pack, like so: 
Without a Google Business listing, your firm will not show up here or within Google Maps since it is managed completely separately from your website. Think of your Google listing like a social profile, but optimize it like a website. Make sure you create one of these for each location where you have an on-the-ground presence, ideally an established office.
Take the time to fill out all the details it asks for, especially:
- Your firm’s name, address, and phone number
- Your services with a description of each
- Images of your premises, inside and outside the office
And anything else you see in these sections: 
Also, make it a regular habit to ask your clients for reviews.
Reviews are crucial for law firms. They are the number one deciding factor when someone is ready to choose a law firm to work with. While you can send automated text messages with a link to your Google profile, you’ll likely have a higher success rate if you ask clients in person while they’re in your office or by calling them.
I’ve also seen success when adding a request for a review on thank you pages.
For instance, if you ever send an electronic contract or invoice out to clients, once they’ve signed or paid, you can send them to a thank you page that also asks for a review. Here’s my favorite example of this from a local accountant. You can emulate this concept for your own website too:
Recommendation
The most common way that people search for legal services is by searching for things like “personal injury lawyer near me” or “car accident lawyer new york”.
For instance, take a look at the monthly search volume on these “near me” keywords for an injury and accident lawyer:
People also commonly search at a state, city, and even suburb level for many legal services, especially if it’s an area of law that differs based on someone’s location. To optimize your website architecture for location keywords like these, it’s best practice to create dedicated pages for each location and then add sub-pages for each of your practice areas in that location.
For example, here’s what that would look like:
The corresponding URL structure would look like this:
- /new-york
- /new-york/car-accident-lawyer
- /new-york/personal-injury-lawyer
- /new-york/work-injury-lawyer
Pro Tip:
Check out my guide on franchise SEO for local and national growth strategies if you have many offices nationwide.
A topic hub is a way to organize and link between related articles on a website. It’s sometimes referred to as a topic cluster because it groups together pages that are related to the same subject matter.
If you run a small firm or your marketing budget is tight, I recommend focusing on a single area of law and turning your website into a topical hub. You can do this by publishing different types of content, such as how-to guides, answering common questions, and creating landing pages for each of your services.
For example, if you currently offer services for immigration law, criminal defense, and personal injury compensation, each appeals to very different audience segments. They’re also very competitive when it comes to marketing, so focusing your efforts on one of these is ideal to make your budget go further.
Most areas of law are naturally suited to building out topic clusters. Every practice area tends to follow a similar pattern in how people search at different stages in their journey.
- Top-of-funnel: When people are very early in their journey, and unaware of what type of lawyer they need, they ask a lot of high-level questions like “what is a car accident attorney”.
- Mid-funnel: When people are in the middle of their journey, they tend to ask more nuanced questions or look for more detailed information, like “average settlement for neck injury”.
- Bottom-of-funnel: When people are ready to hire an attorney, they search for the practice area + “attorney” or “lawyer”. Sometimes they include a location but nothing else. For example, “personal injury lawyer”.
This pattern applies to most areas of law. To apply it to your website, enter your main practice area and a few variations into Keywords Explorer:
Make sure to include a few different variations like how I’ve added different ways people search for lawyers (lawyer, attorney, solicitor) and also for other related terms (compensation, personal injury, settlement).
If you check the Matching terms report, you’ll generally get a big list that you’ll need to filter to make it more manageable when turning it into a content plan.
For example, there are 164,636 different keyword variations of how people search for personal injury lawyers. These generate over 2.4 million searches per month in the US.
You can make the list more manageable by removing keywords with no search volume. Just set the minimum volume to 1:
You can also use the include filter to only see keywords containing your location for your location landing pages:
There are also a number of distinct sub-themes relevant to your area of law. To isolate these, you can use the Cluster by Terms side panel. For instance, looking at our list of injury-related keywords, you can easily spot specific body parts that emerge as sub-themes:
Other sub-themes include:
- How the accident happened (at work, in a car)
- How much compensation someone can get (compensation, average, settlement)
- How severe the injury was (traumatic)
Each of these sub-themes can be turned into a cluster. Here’s what it might look like for the topic of neck injuries:
People tend to ask a lot of questions related to most areas of law. As you go through the exercise of planning out your topic clusters, you should also consider building out a knowledge hub where people can more easily navigate your FAQs and find the answers they’re looking for.
Use the knowledge base exclusively for question-related content. You can find the most popular questions people ask after an accident or injury in the Matching terms > Questions tab:
You can also easily see clusters of keywords for the top-of-funnel and mid-funnel questions people ask by checking the Clusters by Parent Topic report. It groups these keywords into similar themes and each group can likely be covered in a single article.
Here’s an example of how Smith’s Lawyers has created a knowledge base with a search feature and broad categories to allow people to find answers to all their questions more easily.
The easier you make it for people to find answers on your website, the less inclined they are to go back to Google and potentially visit a competitor’s website instead. It also increases their interaction time with your brand, giving you a higher chance of being front-of-mind when they are ready to speak to a lawyer about their case.
Some areas of law lend themselves to certain types of interactive content. An obvious example is a compensation calculator for injury and accident claims. Doing a very quick search, there are over 1,500 keywords on this topic searched over 44,000 times a month in the US.
The best part is how insanely low the competition is on these keywords:
Keyword difficulty is graded on a 100-point scale, so single-digit figures mean there’s virtually no competition to contend with. It’s not all that hard to create a calculator either.
There are many low-cost, no-code tools on the market, like Outgrow, that allow you to create a simple calculator in no time. Other types of interactive content you could consider are:
- Quiz-style questionnaires: great for helping people decide if they need a lawyer for their case.
- Chatbots: to answer people’s questions in real-time.
- Assessments: to pre-qualify leads before they book a meeting with you.
- Calendar or countdown clock: to help people keep track of imminent deadlines.
Backlinks are like the internet’s version of citations. They are typically dark blue, underlined text that connects you to a different page on the internet. In SEO, links play a very important role for a few different reasons:
- Links are how search engines discover new content. Your content may not be discovered if you have no links pointing to it.
- Links are like votes in a popularity contest. The more you have from authoritative websites in your industry, the more they elevate your brand.
- Links also help search engines understand what different websites are about. Getting links from other law-related websites will help build relevancy to your brand.
Think of link building as a scaled-down version of PR. It’s often easier and cheaper to implement. However, it is very time-intensive in most cases. If you’re doing your own SEO, hats off to you!
However, I’d recommend you consider partnering with an agency that specializes in law firm SEO and can handle link building for you. Typically, agencies like these will have existing relationships with law-related websites where they can feature your brand, which will be completely hands-off for you.
For instance, Webris has a database of thousands of legal websites on which they have been able to feature their clients. If you don’t have an existing database to work with and you’re doing SEO yourself, here are some alternative tactics to consider.
Expert quotes
Many journalists and writers benefit from quoting subject-matter experts in their content. You could be such an expert, and every time someone quotes you, ask for a link back to your website. Check out platforms like Muck Rack or SourceBottle, where reporters post callouts for specific experts they’re looking to get quotes from or feature in their articles.
Guest posting
If you like writing content, you can alternatively create content for other people’s websites and include links back to your site. This approach is more time intensive. To make the effort worth it, reach out to websites with an established audience so you get some additional brand exposure too.
Updating outdated content
If you’re checking out other people’s legal content and you ever notice a mistake or outdated information, you could reach out and offer to help them correct it in exchange for a link to your website.
Naturally, you’ll need to recommend updates for sections of content that relate to your practice areas for this to work and for the link to make sense in the context of the content.
Final thoughts
SEO for personal injury lawyers is one of the most competitive niches. High advertising costs and high competition levels make it difficult for new or small firms to compete against industry giants.
As a new or emerging firm, you can take a more nimble approach and outrank the big firms for low competition keywords they haven’t optimized their websites for. It’s all about doing thorough research to uncover these opportunities in your practice area.
Want to know more? Reach out on LinkedIn.
SEO
Google Ads To Phase Out Enhanced CPC Bidding Strategy
Google has announced plans to discontinue its Enhanced Cost-Per-Click (eCPC) bidding strategy for search and display ad campaigns.
This change, set to roll out in stages over the coming months, marks the end of an era for one of Google’s earliest smart bidding options.
Dates & Changes
Starting October 2024, new search and display ad campaigns will no longer be able to select Enhanced CPC as a bidding strategy.
However, existing eCPC campaigns will continue to function normally until March 2025.
From March 2025, all remaining search and display ad campaigns using Enhanced CPC will be automatically migrated to manual CPC bidding.
Advertisers who prefer not to change their campaigns before this date will see their bidding strategy default to manual CPC.
Impact On Display Campaigns
No immediate action is required for advertisers running display campaigns with the Maximize Clicks strategy and Enhanced CPC enabled.
These campaigns will automatically transition to the Maximize Clicks bidding strategy in March 2025.
Rationale Behind The Change
Google introduced Enhanced CPC over a decade ago as its first Smart Bidding strategy. The company has since developed more advanced machine learning-driven bidding options, such as Maximize Conversions with an optional target CPA and Maximize Conversion Value with an optional target ROAS.
In an email to affected advertisers, Google stated:
“These strategies have the potential to deliver comparable or superior outcomes. As we transition to these improved strategies, search and display ads campaigns will phase out Enhanced CPC.”
What This Means for Advertisers
This update signals Google’s continued push towards more sophisticated, AI-driven bidding strategies.
In the coming months, advertisers currently relying on Enhanced CPC will need to evaluate their options and potentially adapt their campaign management approaches.
While the change may require some initial adjustments, it also allows advertisers to explore and leverage Google’s more advanced bidding strategies, potentially improving campaign performance and efficiency.
FAQ
What change is Google implementing for Enhanced CPC bidding?
Google will discontinue the Enhanced Cost-Per-Click (eCPC) bidding strategy for search and display ad campaigns.
- New search and display ad campaigns can’t select eCPC starting October 2024.
- Existing campaigns will function with eCPC until March 2025.
- From March 2025, remaining eCPC campaigns will switch to manual CPC bidding.
How will this update impact existing campaigns using Enhanced CPC?
Campaigns using Enhanced CPC will continue as usual until March 2025. After that:
- Search and display ad campaigns employing eCPC will automatically migrate to manual CPC bidding.
- Display campaigns with Maximize Clicks and eCPC enabled will transition to the Maximize Clicks strategy in March 2025.
What are the recommended alternatives to Enhanced CPC?
Google suggests using its more advanced, AI-driven bidding strategies:
- Maximize Conversions – Can include an optional target CPA (Cost Per Acquisition).
- Maximize Conversion Value – Can include an optional target ROAS (Return on Ad Spend).
These strategies are expected to deliver comparable or superior outcomes compared to Enhanced CPC.
What should advertisers do in preparation for this change?
Advertisers need to evaluate their current reliance on Enhanced CPC and explore alternatives:
- Assess how newer AI-driven bidding strategies can be integrated into their campaigns.
- Consider transitioning some campaigns earlier to adapt to the new strategies gradually.
- Leverage tools and resources provided by Google to maximize performance and efficiency.
This proactive approach will help manage changes smoothly and explore potential performance improvements.
Featured Image: Vladimka production/Shutterstock
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