New & Notable in Digital Marketing: November 2015

By Andrea Cole | Published December 10, 2015 | Categories: Digital Marketing

Happy Holidays! November 2015 was chock full of interesting and important updates in the land of SEO and PPC. Here's your monthly dose of what was new and notable in digital marketing this past November 2015.

SEO

Next Google algorithm update for links (Penguin v 4.0) should happen by the end of the year. This algo update will be a real-time version, meaning as Google detects spammy links on a site, it will update the rankings accordingly. At the same time, when those spammy links are removed and Google’s indexer picks up on that, rankings should adjust again. This is a huge and important change that will give more immediate results as adjustments are made to backlink profiles.

Unconfirmed Google Phantom (quality) algo update occurred on November 19th.

Google to start indexing App-only content and show results in Mobile search. This presents an opportunity for App content generators to gain more real estate in Mobile search and presents a threat to those competitors with no App content.

Google set to release AMP pages for Google Mobile search in early 2016. AMP stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages, a project backed by Google that has gained support from publishers and is aimed at making the mobile internet faster. Considering how Google Mobile ranks mobile optimized pages higher than non-mobile optimized pages, it’s possible Google Mobile will rank AMP pages highest of them all.

Google releases updated Mobile search quality rater’s guide. Most interesting is the increased focus on mobile usability as a ranking factor, specifically ease of data entry, page display on various screen sizes, difficulty in use, and load time.

Google removes reviews from new Google+ Local listings. Reviews will still be visible in local search results and maps.

PPC

AdWords releases “click-share” metric for Shopping ads. Click share shows you the percentage of total possible clicks received by your Shopping ads. Use this new metric to help you better understand where you’re missing out on click traffic.

AdWords releases text message remarketing.

OTHER TIDBITS

Q3 2015 E-Commerce Jumps 15% Y/Y to $69.7 Billion in Sales. 84% of digital dollars came from Desktop. Mobile commerce contributed the remaining 16%. Mobile achieved strong year-over-year growth at 70% as compared to just 8% from desktop.