Pure SEO’s This Week In Search series takes a look at the top SEO and SEM news stories from the week.
This week Bing Ads created a new tab, Google helped businesses, consumers and families, and Facebook decided to play fair.
Bing Ads Introduces Overview Tab for Easier Access to Key Insights
Thanks to a new tab in Bing Ads, advertisers can now customize the way they view their insights. Data within the ‘overview’ tab can be played around with, giving them the power to focus on what’s most important to them. Segments of data in the tab are called ’tiles’ and these can be added, removed and reordered in the process of customization.
The tab will also contain a ‘tips’ section, highlighting new features that are relevant to their business. The overview tab will be available to advertisers over the coming weeks.
Book Directly Through Google My Business
Google My Business pages will soon feature a new booking button that allows people to book directly through GMB. “Booking buttons can help your business stand out from the crowd,” said Google. This feature will allow customers to book appointments in under a minute, and businesses can track the number of bookings coming through.
Supported booking providers currently include:
- Appointy
- Bookatable
- Booksy
- Full Slate
- Genbook
- Mindbody
- Mytime
- Pike13
- Rosy
- SalonRunner
- Setmore
- Shore
- Supersalon software
- Wellnessliving
- Yocale
Shop Online with Google Payment
Google has announced a mobile payment service called Google Payment. Now Google users can load their payment and shipping information into their Google account and pay for things quickly and easily.
This new feature won’t cost merchants or shoppers a cent. Google Payment currently supports Adyen, Braintree, Vantiv, and Stripe, but they will be partnering with more payment providers soon.
Facebook Introduces ‘Explore’ Feed to Improve Organic Reach
Pages published on Facebook’s desktop website may see an improvement in organic reach with the new Explore feed. Until now, Facebook has made it difficult for pages to achieve organic reach by prioritizing paid posts and posts from friends and family.
With the Explore feed, Facebook users can find posts from pages they don’t follow, exposing them to pages they may not have come across otherwise. The revealed posts will be selected based on the user’s interests.
The feed is, in Facebook’s words: ”… a complimentary feed of popular articles, videos, and photos, automatically customized for each person based on content that might be interesting to them.”
Google Assistant Provides Games for the Family
Kids and families can now find over 50 new games, activities and stories in Google Assistant. These include trivia, musical statues, storytelling and more, and are available on Home devices, smartphones and other devices that support Google Assistant.
Google Assistant can be personalized to suit kids under 13, and Home devices can recognize up to 6 different voices. This means that kids under 13 can use the same devices as their parents, but the voice recognition software will present them with customized options and experiences.
Parents can control Google Assistant using an app called Family Link. This gives them the power to control their kids’ Android device experiences.