Facebook Algorithm to Favor Original Reporting & This Week’s Digital Marketing News [PODCAST]

This week, Jess Budde, Greg Finn, and Christine “Shep” Zirnheld cover all the digital marketing headlines before you log off for the holiday weekend.

Facebook will prioritize original reporting 

Facebook announced that they are updating their algorithm for news articles to prioritize original reporting.

If many articles related to a certain topic link back to one article as a source, Facebook would identify that article as the original report.

The social media giant also announced that, in an effort to promote transparent authorship, they will prioritize articles that list a reporter in the byline over articles that do not.

Organic Google Shopping listings can now appear in main search results

Google began showing organic shopping listings in the shopping tab of Google.com earlier this year and is now featuring organic listings in its main search results as well.

These free listings will appear in the knowledge panel, which will be powered by product feeds in Google’s merchant center, not structured data from sites.

This change sets the product listings in the knowledge panel apart from other product information found in the SERPs. This new feature will be fully rolled out by the end of the year.

Bing gives details on how they rank content

Bing released new webmaster guidelines that outline the parameters they use to rank content in the search results in order of importance.

The third item on the list, after relevance and quality and credibility, is user engagement.

This parameter looks at clickthrough rates, bounce rates, and how the user interacted with the web page after they clicked through from the search results.

Google changes desktop ad labeling for shopping ads

Instead of a “Sponsored” ad label, users will soon see the “Ads” label that is already used to specify which shopping results are ads on mobile.

More brands sign on to boycott Facebook Ads

Prominent brands like Coca-Cola, Ford, and Levi’s are joining the July boycott of Facebook Ads as part of the “Stop hate for profit” campaign.

Keith Aldrich delivers a spicy take of the week regarding Google Ads’ bid estimates.  Somehow, getting 4 more top impressions for an additional $800 CPC just doesn’t seem to add up.

I'm just going to leave this here…. #ppcchat pic.twitter.com/64jlqAR4nh

— Keith Aldrich (@keithaldrich) July 1, 2020

ICYMI, the CCPA is now officially in full effect.

If you need a refresher on how this will affect your ads, David Hermann has a helpful Twitter thread to break it down.

As a reminder, CCPA goes into effect TOMORROW. If you’re running FB ads, you’re going to start noticing CA targeting’s performance drop.

Why? FB is limiting the data you get from, well, me and other Californians like me.

— David Herrmann (@herrmanndigital) June 30, 2020

Then, we answer your burning digital marketing questions during our lightning round:

• Who is running ads on local business profiles?
• What is the difference between “Google Search Keywords” and “In-Market Keywords” in Google’s custom intent audiences?
• When did voice search start to decline?
• Where can job hunters look for support on social media?
• Why retailers may see an abandoned cart influx from shoppers named John Smith.
• How you can see Google Analytics data in Search Console reporting.

Head over to the Marketing O’Clock site to subscribe and find links to all of this weeks’ articles.

Thank you to our sponsors!

• Ahrefs – An all-in-one SEO toolset that gives you the tools you need to rank your website in Google and get tons of search traffic.
• Opteo – Helps Google Ads managers automate time-consuming manual tasks so they can spend more time on high-level strategy and creative work.

Featured Image Credit: Cypress North