Advertiser: Google Smart Shopping Campaigns Can Report Fake Revenues

Kirk Williams posted a warning that if you are using the new customer acquisition goals in Google Smart Shopping Campaigns, Google might show you revenue that is not real. The issue is that you set how much is the value of a new customer, and Google will add that value on top of any real revenue you get from the ad click.

from Search Engine Roundtable https://ift.tt/3lldgh9

Google Responds To Exact Match Domain Not Ranking For Christmas Trees

Got to say, this is an unusual response from Google's John Mueller. In short, someone with an exact match domain asked John why his site is not ranking for its brand name. The web site domain has Christmas Trees in it and the search query he shared a screen shot of showed product listing ads and other ads but not his web site ranking (note, it did not show organic results).

from Search Engine Roundtable https://ift.tt/3piTJAy

Google: XML Sitemaps Are A Minimal Baseline For Any Serious Website

Google's John Mueller said on Twitter that having an XML Sitemap file is "a minimal baseline for any serious website." Basically, all serious websites should have an XML sitemap file part of it or it is not a serious website.

from Search Engine Roundtable https://ift.tt/38qVaGY

Bing Does Not Know Its Ranking Signal Weights - Machines Learning Deals With It

Izzi Smith and Marcus Tandler in their 302 of a Kind weekly SEO video chat interviewed Microsoft's Fabrice Canel. In that interview Fabrice Canel explained that he and no one really knows the individual weights of the ranking signals used at Bing because they are all handled by machine learning.

from Search Engine Roundtable https://ift.tt/3eRMomE

Video On Google Search Quality Evaluators/Raters

Google has released a short video on how Search Quality Evaluators help Google make Google Search better. I assume this is part of Google trying to debunk some myths and get the word out that these Search Quality Evaluators do not manually impact the search results, at least not directly.

from Search Engine Roundtable https://ift.tt/2IdbMY9