SEARCHENGINES
Google Says Audience Signals Help Jumpstart Performance Max Campaigns But Continue To Inform
The other day, Google Ads Liaison, Ginny Marvin said that audience signals are used to only “jumpstart” your Performance Max campaigns. It turns out that Google Ads may continue to use these signals to inform Google’s systems over the campaign lifecycle.
Let me share the tweets on this and then Greg Finn’s follow up with Google which he published on Search Engine Land.
Kirk Williams asked about audience signals and performance max campaigns, in which Ginny Marvin replied to numerous questions on:
Audience signals indicate what you know about your most valuable customers. 1P data and/or custom segments are used as a starting point to speed up the machine learning’s ability to find similar & new converting customers.
This video might help too: https://t.co/7Pw2pOHnSX
— AdsLiaison (@adsliaison) April 1, 2022
Hard targeting would allow for some prrrretty cool campaign setups. But since it’s just a starting signal, it’s too loose.
— Mike Ryan (@mikeryanretail) April 1, 2022
So they ask more questions to dig into how these signals influence the Google Ads automation:
Totally
— Mike Ryan (@mikeryanretail) April 1, 2022
Here is where Ginny Marvin said “signals are used to jumpstart only.”
-Yes, signals are used to jumpstart only. They don’t limit ads to those audiences. Aim is to find most conv/conv value.
-Add assets for your high value audiences (can be for multiple specific segments)
-Use audience insights to see top segments to inform assets & landing pages— AdsLiaison (@adsliaison) April 1, 2022
Then Greg Finn followed up with Google to learn that it is not just to jumpstart. Google, however, added additional context around how audience signals can impact early performance within campaigns. “Including them early in the campaign lifecycle can be useful to help jumpstart performance, but they will also continue to inform our systems over the campaign lifecycle, especially as first-party data, in particular, is updated,” the company said.
Greg Finn wrote “So not only can that audience signal help to jumpstart the campaigns, but will also inform throughout the lifecycle of the campaign. Additionally, these signals can help to inform systems over time. Of course, these audience signals are different than traditional audiences in Google Ads. Performance Max will expand beyond the audience signals provided and by nature there is no way to limit that expansion.”
So keep this all in mind when funneling these signals into your Performance Max campaigns. It can impact you in the jumpstart phase and even well beyond.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
Source: www.seroundtable.com
SEARCHENGINES
Google Won’t Change The 301 Signals For Ranking & SEO
Gary Illyes from Google said on stage at the SERP conference last week that there is no way that Google would change how the 301 redirect signal works for SEO or search rankings. Gary added that it’s a very reliable signal.
Nikola Minkov quoted Gary Illyes as saying, “It is a very reliable signal, and there is no way we could change that signal,” when asked if a 301 redirect not working is a myth. Honestly, I am not sure the context of this question, as it is not clear from the post on X, but here it is:
More from @methode:
– 301 redirect not working is a myth. “It is a very reliable signal, and there is no way we could change that signal”.#SERPConf2024#SERPConf2024International— Nikola Minkov (@n_minkov) April 19, 2024
We’ve covered 301 redirects here countless times – but I never saw a myth that Google does not use 301 redirects as a signal for canonicalization or for passing signals from an old URL to the redirected URL.
Forum discussion at X.
Note: This was pre-written and scheduled to be posted today, I am currently offline for Passover.
SEARCHENGINES
Google Again Says Ignore Link Spam Especially To 404 Pages
I am not sure how many times Google has said that you do not need to disavow spammy links, that you can ignore link spam attacks and that links pointing to pages that 404/410 are links that do not count – but John Mueller from Google said it again.
In a thread on X, John Mueller from Google wrote, “if the links are going to URLs that 404 on your site, they’re already dropped.” “They do nothing,” he added, “If there’s no indexable destination URL, there’s no link.”
John then added, “I’d generally ignore link-spam, and definitely ignore link-spam to 404s.”
Asking if it would hurt to disavow, after responding with the messages above, John wrote:
It will do absolutely nothing. I would take the time to rework a holistic & forward-looking strategy for the site overall instead of working on incremental tweaks (other tweaks might do something, but you probably need real change, not tweaks).
Earlier this year we had tons of SEOs notice spammy links to 404 error pages, John said ignore them. In 2021, Google said links to 404 pages do not count, Google also said that in 2012 and many other times.
Plus, outside of links to 404 pages, Google has said to ignore spammy links, time and time again – even the toxic links – ignore them. The messaging around this changed in 2016 when Penguin 4.0 was released and Google began devaluing links over demoting them.
Here are those new posts in context:
I’d say add both. Lol
— Jeremy Rivera (@JeremyRiveraSEO) April 11, 2024
Sure. But also, save yourself the work completely :-).
— John 🧀 … 🧀 (@JohnMu) April 11, 2024
Re-reading your initial post – if the links are going to URLs that 404 on your site, they’re already dropped. They do nothing. If there’s no indexable destination URL, there’s no link. I’d generally ignore link-spam, and definitely ignore link-spam to 404s.
— John 🧀 … 🧀 (@JohnMu) April 11, 2024
… but still… is this a dumb idea?
— Rebekah Edwards (@rebekah_creates) April 11, 2024
It will do absolutely nothing. I would take the time to rework a holistic & forward-looking strategy for the site overall instead of working on incremental tweaks (other tweaks might do something, but you probably need real change, not tweaks).
— John 🧀 … 🧀 (@JohnMu) April 11, 2024
And in general, Google says it ignores spammy links, so you should too (not new) but this post from John Mueller is:
I would just ignore them, Google ignores them too. Sometimes they’re just more visible in tools, but that doesn’t mean they’re a problem.
— John 🧀 … 🧀 (@JohnMu) April 18, 2024
And then also on Mastodon wrote about a similar situation, “Google has 2 decades of practice of ignoring spammy links. There’s no need to do anything for those links.”
Forum discussion at X.
Note: This was pre-written and scheduled to be posted today, I am currently offline for Passover.
SEARCHENGINES
Google Needs Very Few Links To Rank Pages; Links Are Less Important
Gary Illyes from Google spoke at the SERP Conf on Friday and he said what he said numerous times before, that Google values links a lot less today than it did in the past. He added that Google Search “needs very few links to rank pages.”
Gary reportedly said, “We need very few links to rank pages… Over the years we’ve made links less important.”
I am quoting Patrick Stox who is quoting what he heard Gary say on stage at the event. Here is Patrick’s post where Gary did a rare reply:
I shouldn’t have said that… I definitely shouldn’t have said that
— Gary 鯨理/경리 Illyes (so official, trust me) (@methode) April 19, 2024
Gary said this a year ago, also in 2022 and other times as well. We previously covered that Google said links would likely become even less important in the future. And even Matt Cutts, the former Googler, said something similar about eight years ago and the truth is, links are weighted a lot less than it was eight years ago and that trend continues. A couple of years ago, Google said links are not the most important Google search ranking factor.
Of course, many SEOs think Google lies about this.
Judith Lewis interviewed Gary Illyes at the SERP Conf this past Friday.
-
PPC5 days ago
19 Best SEO Tools in 2024 (For Every Use Case)
-
MARKETING7 days ago
Streamlining Processes for Increased Efficiency and Results
-
PPC7 days ago
97 Marvelous May Content Ideas for Blog Posts, Videos, & More
-
SEARCHENGINES7 days ago
Daily Search Forum Recap: April 17, 2024
-
SEO7 days ago
An In-Depth Guide And Best Practices For Mobile SEO
-
SEARCHENGINES6 days ago
Daily Search Forum Recap: April 18, 2024
-
MARKETING6 days ago
Ecommerce evolution: Blurring the lines between B2B and B2C
-
SEARCHENGINES4 days ago
Daily Search Forum Recap: April 19, 2024
You must be logged in to post a comment Login