SEARCHENGINES
Smart Shopping & Local Campaigns Being Replaced By Performance Max : New Tools
Google has released a set of new tools and features to help advertisers when Google existing and future Smart Shopping campaigns and Local Campaigns get replaced by Performance Max campaigns. This includes a new migration tool and API migrations.
As a reminder, in July 2022, existing and future Smart Shopping campaigns will begin automatic upgrades to Performance Max campaigns. Local campaigns will begin automatic upgrades starting in August 2022.
There is a one-click migration tool will be available for Smart Shopping campaigns in April & in June for Local campaigns. After that, Smart Shopping campaigns will auto-upgrade between July and September 2022. And Local campaigns will auto-upgrade between August and September.
Starting in April, you can easily upgrade your Smart Shopping campaigns with a new “one-click” tool in Google Ads. You’ll be able to upgrade your Local campaigns with the tool starting in June. The tool gives you flexibility to upgrade specific campaigns or all of your campaigns at once.
Then the API migration will be available later this year, according to Google. The AdWords API will sunset on April 27, 2022. Developers using SSC via the AdWords API should migrate to the Google Ads API using SSC as early as possible. The self-migration by the Google Ads API will only be available after the sunset of the AdWords API.
Here is the timeline for all of this:
There are more details over here as well and Ginny posted these tweets:
2/3
✅A one-click migration tool will be available for Smart Shopping campaigns in April & in June for Local campaigns
🗓Then, Smart Shopping campaigns will auto-upgrade between Jul-Sep; Local campaigns will auto-upgrade Aug-Sep
💫API migration will be available later this year— AdsLiaison (@adsliaison) January 27, 2022
Here are upcoming milestones to help you get ready for the Smart Shopping and Local campaign upgrades to Performance Max:
- Upgrade with a one-click tool: Starting in April, a “one-click” upgrade tool will begin rolling out in Google Ads to upgrade your Smart Shopping campaigns. You’ll be able to upgrade your Local campaigns with the tool starting in June. The tool gives you options to upgrade specific campaigns or all of your campaigns at once. Learnings from your existing campaigns will be used in your new Performance Max campaigns to ensure consistent performance.
- Upgrade automatically: From July through September, your Smart Shopping campaigns will be automatically upgraded for you. Your Local campaigns will be automatically upgraded from August through September. You will no longer be able to create new Smart Shopping and Local campaigns once your existing campaigns are automatically upgraded.
- Conclude upgrades: The upgrade process will conclude by the end of September to give you time to use your Performance Max campaigns for the holiday season.
Some tips:
- Upload creative assets: We recommend that you provide additional creative assets to help your campaign appear on more eligible surfaces and perform better.
- Allow time for the campaign to ramp up: Give your new Performance Max campaign time to ramp up. For campaigns with online sales or omnichannel goals, allow for 2-3 days. For campaigns with offline-only goals, allow for 3-4 weeks.
- Avoid overlapping targeting: Performance Max campaigns will be prioritized over existing Smart Shopping campaigns, standard Shopping campaigns, and Display Dynamic Remarketing campaigns that target the same products. As a result, we recommend waiting to upgrade your existing Smart Shopping campaigns until the upgrade tool becomes available. If your new Performance Max campaign does target the same products, ensure that you set an equal budget to maintain volume.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
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.
SEARCHENGINES
Google Core Update Flux, AdSense Ad Intent, California Link Tax & More
For the original iTunes version, click here.
The Google March 2024 core update is still rolling out, almost 6 weeks now, and we saw two shifts of ranking volatility, both mid-week and the weekend before. Google’s Danny Sullivan went on the defensive on search quality and forum listings in the search results. Google’s site reputation abuse spam policy will be fought both algorithmically and through manual actions. Google responded to The Verge mocking its search rankings over best printer. Google Search Console has a new unused ownership tokens page. Some sites may see the Google Indexing API work for a limited time on unsupported content types. And having two sites won’t result in your sites search ranking decline. BingBot now fully supports Brotli compression and will test Zstd compression soon. Google Search is testing thumbs-up and down buttons for product carousels. Google is testing new sitelinks designs. Google Notes on Search may not go away in May. Google Maps no longer supports draft reviews. Google Maps released a bunch of new maps, directions, travel and EV features. Google Ads Demand Gen campaigns now support AI image generation. Google Ads is testing a similar product carousel. Google Ads reminds advertisers that ad customizers are going away. Google Ads is testing a new horizontal ad card format. Google AdSense has these new ad intent formats. Google AdSense publishers are reporting lower RPM earnings since mid-February. Google threatens to drop links to California news publishers amongst link tax bill. That was the search news this week at the Search Engine Roundtable.
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