Consumer Spending Trends on Mother's day!

According to a research by the National Retail Federation and BIGinsight: Consumer spending is forecast to be up 11 percent this year for Mother's Day, showing an average of $168.94 spent in celebration. The NRF 2013 Mother’s Day consumer spending survey was designed to gauge consumer behavior and shopping trends related to the Mother’s Day holiday.

The survey found 14.1 percent of shoppers this Mother's Day will spend more than $2.3 billion on electronics, up from $1.6 billion last year. Additionally, gift givers will splurge on a special outing, such as brunch or dinner ($3.5 billion), flowers ($2.3 billion), gift cards ($2.0 billion), clothing or clothing accessories ($1.7 billion), and personal service gifts, such as a day at the spa ($1.5 billion). 

Google Shopping updating the feeds specifications!

Google Shopping announced that it will be updating the feeds specifications, which is a part of the new Google Shopping rollout that is based on the product listing ads. The changes will have an effect on the accounts globally.

Google is not making all the changes available at one but it wants to give enough time to merchants to adapt themselves to the changes before officially releasing them.

The change will take place on July 15 in the U.S. and September 16, globally. The enforcement for other accounts in the U.S., UK, France, and Germany will start on July 15 and on September 16, globally.

Here’s the complete list of Product Feeds Specification: http://support.google.com/merchants/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=188494#US

Google began rolling out Ad group level mobile bid adjustments!

Google announced that Ad group level mobile bid adjustments are now available in many Google AdWords enhanced campaign accounts, with more accounts being added.

Another change is that you can now set bulk bid adjustments for locations, dayparts and devices.

These new changes are also active through AdWords Editor, for those AdWords customers using the editor to create, edit and manage their AdWords ads.

These changes are being made in hopes that greater flexibility will increase CPC values when AdWords customers can easily increase bids on segments that are performing well for them.

YouTube Trends Map is here!

If you are wondering what the world is watching on YouTube, Now, with the YouTube Trends Map, it will be a matter of few clicks to get regional breakdowns of popular videos, filter videos on the basis of age demographics & gender, and do much more.

Currently, available just for the U.S., The Trends Map will let you know if the video you have shared on Facebook is popular in other parts of the country. Or the new viral video that you have produced has gained traction in the entire country.

Celebrate Mother's Day with Google!

Mother’s Day is quickly approaching and to help you out, Google announced that it has launched a special Mother’s Day page to help sons and daughters everywhere to plan an extra special day for their mothers.

The page includes a gift guide, a guide to local florists, and an offer to send a tech care package to help your technologically deficient mother get on the Internet so you can chat it up in a Google+ hangout.

Google will be hosting a number of events this week to share some ideas; they will be suggesting “creative ideas” to make this Mother’s Day “a day your mom won’t forget.” Google has also set up a Mother’s Day Guide Google+ community for people to share ideas and stories with each other.

Google on The Importance of Online Reviews!

As part of the “Friday 15″ series for small business owners, Google has shared a video discussing the importance of online reviews.

It features Whitney Lemon from Google’s’ “Get Your Business Online” team and Cody Julian, the associate marketing manager at Google Fiber.

According to a study Julian cites, seventy percent of Americans say they look at product reviews before making a purchase decision.

Here is the video:

 

Local search via mobile devices continues its significant pace of growth!

A recent report released by the Local Search Association and prepared by comScore, Inc. finds that local search via non-PC devices continues its significant pace of growth, driven by the rapid adoption of smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices. The continuing shift of mobile usage signals an opportunity for local businesses to evaluate where they devote their online ad spending.

The data argue that there has been zero-percent growth in PC Internet traffic since 2011. At the same time mobile is growing as a percentage of overall traffic to websites. As of Q4, on average, mobile traffic stood at 15 percent. However in particular categories it’s much higher.

Google analytics have rolled out real-time conversions tracking!

Google analytics have rolled out a new update to its analytics adding real-time conversions tracking a new segmentation UI.  These new features will let you see how many visitors on your website are converting and against what goals.

Real-Time Conversions shows all of the latest conversion for the last 30 minutes in real-time letting you see your conversions as they happen.

All the goals that are being tracked will be visible on the UI, irrespective of whether there have been any completions in the past half an hour. For rest of the real time reports, you need to click on a specific goal and the report will be automatically segmented. Basic filters are also applied to goals, which will enable you to analyze goal completions from specific location or any other dimension that you are interested in.

“Google Now” now available on iOS!

Google Now is a reflection of how the future of search will slowly and gradually change and will be different from its past. Google Now is a combination of search/web history, data, and context. It gives a lot of personalized information to users even if they haven't asked for it. The feature pushes information to people on the basis of their location and activities. It has more holistic understanding of the needs of users and delivers data in an informative & coherent way.

Google Now was exclusively available on Android devices running on Jelly Bean or higher OS versions. Recently Google has made Google Now available on iOS in a new update to the Search app for iPhones and iPads.

The app is available in the App Store.

Google Now is expected to come to Google’s Chrome browser, and possibly even the Google homepage in the future.

Google adding app activities to web search results!

Google announced that it is adding app activities to web search results. The feature is tied to the recently launched Google+ Sign-in Platform, which is an online identity management feature that enables users to log into mobile apps and websites with their Google account.

When users search for your app, they often want to go deeper and see what in-app content fellow users find interesting. Soon, when you will search for a site or an application on Google.com, you will see all the popular and aggregate user activities on the right side of the search results. For example; when you will search for Fandango, you will see results of top movies among users. And by clicking on the movie, you will be directed to its page on Fandago.

The feature is rolling out on desktop search over the coming weeks and only with a limited number of apps at first. Launch partners include: Deezer, Fandango, Flixster, Slacker Radio, Songza, SoundCloud and TuneIn.