New upgrade center for upgrading AdWords accounts to Enhanced Campaigns!

Google announced the launch of a new upgrade center for upgrading AdWords accounts to Enhanced Campaigns.  Accessible from the left-hand navigation bar on the Campaigns tab, the upgrade center lets advertisers managing several campaigns perform bulk upgrades to multiple campaigns simultaneously and merge selected campaigns in a few simple steps. The center lets advertisers upgrade several campaigns at once and merge them together.

In a blog post, Google explains how to use the tool:

The upgrade center will roll-out to advertisers over the next few weeks.

Google added functionality for social annotations and in-app ad targeting to enhanced campaigns!

From now on AdWords advertisers can easily highlight their Google+ follower counts in their enhanced campaigns. On average, Google says, ads with these follower counts have “a 5-10% higher click-through rate” than regular ads.

Also, Advertisers targeting app users can set in-app ad bids based on user context, including location, time of day and device, with enhanced campaigns. 

Google bringing Google-wide identities to YouTube!

Google is going to introduce a long requesting feature that will enable users to link their Google+ page identity to YouTube channel.

Linking a Google+ page with YouTube channel has several benefits:

• It will enable page owners to add multiple managers to their channel
• Owners can choose or rename their channel & page
• The Hangouts On Air will be properly linked
• It will result in an improved video sharing to YouTube, Google+, and more
• Owners will have a YouTube tab on their page

Google+ profiles and pages are two types of Google identities and users have to choose the one which they think is right for their YouTube channel.

The feature is still in beta phase.  YouTube Creator Blog is sharing a tutorial to get started with the process.

Google site speed study: Is the web getting faster?

Google has always given importance to speed. In 2011, they launched the Page Speed reports and tools to help site owner’s speed up their pages load time.

The latest Google site speed study has revealed that the web is getting faster.  Google has determined that the web is getting fasters because of the improving technology and more powerful servers. The continuous deployment of 4G/LET towers has also contributed to the increased speed. Speed and processing powers of mobile devices are also some other factors.

The study also disclosed that average size of web pages has increased 56 percent since 2012. 

Google has published an entire set of webmaster help documentation centered around site speed. From how Google measures site speed to practical advice on what it means for you as a site owner.

Google experimenting with a new quick view badge!

Google is experimenting with a new “Quick View” badge that will appear next to select results when a searcher uses Google Mobile search from their smartphone.  Much like the standard Web site preview pop-up window, this quick view feature will pull into the results page a view of common target location. For instance, the blog uses for the sample search for “poker hands” for that will pop up a quick view of a Wikipedia page listing for that has a common poker hands.

Google is calling this the Quick View experimental project, and it is beginning with mobile-friendly versions of relevant Wikipedia pages for English-language searches. The offering will extend to webmasters' participation in the program over time as well.

Google introduces new “x-default hreflang” annotation for International Landing Pages!

Google have released details on a new annotation which allows webmasters, who own multinational and multilingual sites, to specify when a page doesn’t target any specific language or location.

The tag helps Google to understand multinational or multilingual sites which redirect or change their pages content for their users. The annotation is supported by Google and Yandex.

The webmaster team has also shared an example to further explain the action.

 

 

New integration options to Google+ Sign-in!

Google recently added new integration options to Google+ Sign-in. They have also forged partnership with social login providers JanRain and Gigya bringing Google+ sign-ins to thousands of new sites.

Developers will now be able to add trusted authentication to their apps and websites, enabling instant download of Android app by the users. The mechanism will enable users customize their app experience using Google+ profile info and share interactive posts with friends. 

About 400,000 sites use Janrain to provide social logins, while 600,000 sites are deployed across Gigya‘s 650 premium clients.  They can now use the features that come with Google+ Sign-in.

Study shows Google beating its primary search competitors to keeping malware out of search results!

A new study reports that Google is beating its primary search competitors pretty significantly when it comes to keeping malware out of search results.

German IT security group called AV-TEST, reviewed more than 40 million web pages — the vast majority (about 38 million) coming from Google, Bing, Yandex and Blekko.

Here is the full study in PDF: http://www.av-test.org/fileadmin/pdf/avtest_2013-03_search_engines_malware_english.pdf

Google has 67.1 % of search queries, comScore March 2013 U.S. Search Engine Rankings!

comScore monthly Search Engine Rankings analysis of the U.S. search marketplace, shows that Google continues to dominate the core search market in March with 67.1 percent of search queries conducted in the US.

According to the report, “20.4 billion explicit core searches were conducted in March (up 11 percent), with Google Sites ranking first with 13.7 billion (up 11 percent). Microsoft Sites ranked second with 3.4 billion searches (up 13 percent), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 2.4 billion (up 14 percent), Ask Network with 540 million (up 14 percent) and AOL, Inc. with 321 million (up 5 percent).”

Google Inactive account Manager: your digital will!

Google is now making it easier to lets the user choose what to do with their data if their account is not used for a long period of time.

The company has announced its Inactive Account Manager. The Inactivity Account Manager allows users to have their data deleted following lengthy periods of inactivity. Using the manager also lets users send their Google data to designated third-parties.

Users can set their inactivity preferences from their Google Account settings.