'Net Features : week 24, google

Product Extensions and Product Local Ads - Mobile

Administrator — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 22:00:00 GMT

Google is now supporting two important ad formats for mobile devices in Product Extension Ads and Product Local Ads.

Product Extension Ads, which enable advertisers to display product images and product details, will now show within mobile search ad listings.

Product Extension Ads are enabled by linking your Google Merchant Center account to your AdWords campaign. Not only will the ads really stand out (check out the image below), but advertisers will have an excellent opportunity to showcase information of relevance to users in an important phase of the buying cycle.

An enhancement to Product Extension Ads, Product Local Ads (still in Beta), show the actual availability of products in local stores along with the product image and price within the mobile ad. Product Local Ads are eligible to show based on location signals such as local search queries and device location which users opt-in to share.

Keep in mind when using product extensions that products should be correctly labeled within the merchant account that has been linked. This is important because Google determines which products to show in the ads. Advertisers and merchants will also want to keep track of product landing pages and check them for accuracy.

Adwords Embedded Sitelinks

Administrator — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 23:40:00 GMT

Several enhancements have been made to Google’s Sitelinks offering for Adwords advertisers since its launch in 2009 and the list of features for the ad format keeps getting longer - and better.

Google introduce embedded sitelinks this week, a feature which will enable advertisers to include an alternative targeted link to their website directly from within the ad. The text within ads that exactly matches one or more of the Sitelinks set up within a campaign will be linked automatically to that Sitelinks destination URL.

Google provided the following example; “If you have separate Sitelinks set up for the words “appliances,” “furniture,” and “flatware,” those words would be hyperlinked in your ad text, leading potential customers to a page for the specific part of the ad that drew their interest.”

Advertisers interested in showing embedded sitelinks must first enable Ad SiteLinks in their campaigns. Google indicated that only those ads appearing above the search results are eligible for embedded sitelinks and they will only be shown when the ads fail to meet the general requirements for one-or-two-line Ad Sitelinks.

Example of an embedded sitelink:

Google's Author Tag – Conduits to Richer Writer Profiles

Administrator — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 17:15:00 GMT

This week Google announced support for “authorship markup” which will help the search engine connect its users with authors through the content those authors publish on the web. Google will ultimately use the data to help its users find content from specific authors directly within the search results but it could also help Google rank search results.

According to Google, the author tag markup enables websites to “publicly link within their site from content to author pages.” This means that if you were to use the markup, you would be able to connect all of the articles to an individual author page (which is what Google will likely include on search results pages). The author pages, according to the announcement, will describe and identify the author, and can include content like the author’s bio and photo, articles and other links.

Authorship markup uses the “rel” attribute in links to indicate the relationship between a content page and an author page. For example:

If you are already doing structured data markup using microdata from schema.org, Google will interpret that authorship information as well.

An important “usage” cue was provided by Google in that the rel=author link must point to an author page on the same site as the content page. The benefit of using authorship markup and remaining consistent in usage is that search engines and other web services will be able to identify works by the same author more easily.

Google has worked with several sites to markup their pages, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNET, Entertainment Weekly, The New Yorker and others. Google has also added the markup to everything hosted by YouTube and Blogger. In the future, both platforms will automatically include this markup when content is published.

Google, Postrank and Social Engagement

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 16:30:00 GMT

A rather noteworthy acqusition took place last week - Google acquired Postrank, a software solution that measures user engagement with topics, brands, authors and content across a multitude of social media sites. The battle for social engagement has officially begun.

PostRank is used by many of the top brands in the world. The company's analytics data is becoming crucual for advertisers and publishers as they are able to receive valuable insights into how content and advertising are performing - or underperforming.

Google announced the Postrank acquisition just days after the release of Google +1, its social annotation service. What Google gets from Postrank and its products are the ability to monitor and aggregate social media data. While it is likely that the functionality will be included within Google Analytics in short order, it is also likely that the technology will support Google's very public push into social. With Facebook threatening, Google has no choice but to buy into social in a big way and buy social technology companies like PostRank just to keep pace.

"We're always looking for new ways to measure and analyze data, and as social analytics become increasingly important for online businesses, we're excited to work with the PostRank team to make this data more actionable and accountable. They have developed an innovative approach to measuring web engagement, and we think they can help us improve our products for our users and advertisers," Google said in a statement.