Why advertisers can no longer trust Google

The Department of Justice’s laid out a damning case against Google in the antitrust lawsuit closing argument.

Search Engine Land Managing Editor Danny Goodwin highlighted some of the damaging evidence – including how Google has been increasing costs for advertisers – in How Google harms search advertisers in 20 slides

In light of the revelations, I contacted search marketers to get their thoughts on Google Ads to evaluate the current confidence level. Spoiler alert: it’s not good.

Clearly, trust is a major issue – and in the court of public opinion among advertisers, Google has already been found guilty.

Here’s what advertisers told Search Engine Land:

Manipulation and deceptive practices

Sarah Stemen (Paid Search Specialist and Founder):

• “Their willingness to rewrite help desk documents, frankly, feels shocking after such revelations.”
• “It seems like Google is trying to hide the mechanics of a potential first-price auction rather than ensuring a truly fair second-price system.”

Boris Beceric (Google Ads consultant and coach):

• “The only one ‘benefitting’ from randomization is Google.”
• “Google is a monopoly that’s raising prizes without telling advertisers about it.”

Dids Reeve (Freelance Paid Media Specialist):

• “The document reads like randomization is code for ‘we can deviate from the usual auction algorithm to make ourselves some more money’. And that if advertisers perceive Google to be ‘randomizing’, then it would be bad enough that they want to cover up the fact.”

Chris Ridley (Paid Media Manager, Evoluted):

• “The latest news of Google randomizing the top two ad positions in the hope advertisers will raise their bids, is a sign that Google is willing to rewrite the rulebook for advertising on their platform.”

Robert Brady (Founder and PPC Expert):

• “Exact match bears the name ‘exact,’ but the behavior of the match type is far from exact. They keep the name because it gives advertisers a false sense of precision.”
• “Randomization in this context is used the same way. The layperson would infer that it meant the behavior was truly random (not influenced by predictable factors), so Google deflects scrutiny when a full analysis shows that their ‘randomization’ showed a clear preference in Google’s favor.”

Amy Hebdon (Google Ads Conversion expert):

• “With RGSP, Google has gaslit advertisers with disingenuous explanations of the changes, trying to convince us that this lack of transparency is for our benefit.”

Google’s prioritization of profit over fairness

Jyll Saskin Gales (Google Ads Coach):

• “However, reading the internal Google commentary on the practice, it’s clear that the motivations for randomization were not noble.”

Charley Brennand (PPC Consultant & Founder):

• “Google will never put advertisers’ needs before their need to grow profit.”

Hebdon added:

• “Using ad rank and a second-price auction, Google already had a system prioritizing quality and user experience while setting a fair price for advertisers. Where’s the flaw in that model, besides the fact that Google wasn’t extracting the maximum revenue possible?”

Julie Friedman Bacchini (Founder of NeptuneMoon):

• “My main takeaway from this is that these exhibits show that Google Ads is absolutely doing what is best for Google Ads first and foremost.”

Nick Handley (Head of Paid Media Performance at Impression):

• “Google has a monopoly on the Search space and until another player challenges Google, I feel we’re going to continue to see this type of revenue-increasing tactic to continue with Google putting stakeholders above clients.”

Trust in Google is quickly collapsing

Kirk Williams (Founder of Zato):

• “But I can say that these [evidence brought up against Google] continually demonstrate the problem Google has right now: trust.”
• “Google has an optics problem right now, and these documents help erode, rather than increase, trust.”

Stemen added:

• “It challenges the very foundation of trust and transparency that’s essential for a healthy digital advertising ecosystem.”
• “It raises the question – what else haven’t they been transparent about?”

Reeve added:

• “It makes me feel like the PPC community and their clients are being manipulated, too.”

Ridley added:

• “We, as advertisers, should not take anything we know about how ad auctions work at face value, even if it’s within the Google Ads Help Center.”

Brennand added:

• “Now with the published data from the court case, we can see that we’ve been manipulated and actually, not even our Google counterparts are privy to what Google is up to.”

Handley added:

• “Given the recent DOJ vs Google trial, it’s becoming increasingly harder to trust Google and the recommendations they provide.”

Impact on advertisers and clients

Gales added:

• “The people who should be most angered by this are Google’s top customers, the Amazons and Temus and Expedias of the world, who spend millions a year on Google Ads just to be punished for their investment by being ‘randomly’ pushed down.”

Brennand added:

• “If this has only just been surfaced now, it begs the question of how many other harmful changes have happened under the radar that we didn’t know about.”

Handley added:

• “This poses an interesting question, how are we meant to trust recommendations from our reps? If they are in the dark as much as us, surely some of their insight is harmful to us advertisers.”

Perceived (un)fairness of ad auctions

Williams added:

• “When users believe an auction to be more about competition and less about manipulation by the auctioneer and then learn it to be otherwise, that causes a lack of trust.”

Gales added:

• “I support the principle of Randomization, as it seems to support the same principle as Quality Score: those with the deepest pockets shall not hoard all the clicks, and the most important thing is to give the user what they want – the best results.”

Ridley added:

• “For years, Google has been telling advertisers through their Google Ads Help Articles that Ad Rank determines ‘whether your ads are eligible to show and, if eligible, where on the page your ads are shown (if at all) relative to other advertisers’ ads’.”
• They even go as far as providing six factors that contribute to calculating your Ad Rank and have published and regularly updated several Google-hosted articles that double-down on the concept that “Your ad’s position on the page is determined by your Ad Rank”

Other reactions of shock and disappointment

Stemen added:

• “However, encountering statements like ‘this gives us the freedom to config pricing’ in official court documents is a real blow.”

Reeve added:

• “It’s quite shocking to see in black and white the cynical way individuals at Google have discussed how they manipulate and warp the definitions and configuration of Google Ads metrics.”

Bacchini added:

• “Advertisers and PPC pros have long suspected some of this stuff, but seeing it in these docs is still stunning.”

Why we care: The breakdown in the relationship between Google and advertisers may start with trust – but it goes beyond that. It becomes harder or impossible to trust advice from ad reps, having seen that Google is prioritizing revenue over fairness via manipulative practices. It means advertisers have an even harder job of ensuring they are not just throwing advertising budget down the drain but actually gaining incremental conversions with their ad spend.

Dig deeper. Has Google Ads lost all credibility? Why one advertiser says it’s time to leave

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TikTok now testing 60-minute video uploads

TikTok is testing a new 60-minute video upload limit, which could unlock new content possibilities for brands, marketers and content creators.

Why we care. TikTok is already a powerful discovery engine, but the ability to upload 60-minute videos opens up TikTok’s potential as a platform to host long-form branded video content – rather than breaking up videos into multiple parts.

Why TikTok is testing this. TikTok wants to give creators more flexibility and the ability to experiment with new types of long-form content (e.g., cooking demos, beauty tutorials, educational lessons, comedic sketches) that don’t fit well into shorter videos.

Not widely available. This new 60-minute video upload option is being tested with a limited number of users in select markets. It is not available to all users yet and TikTok has no “immediate plans” for a wider rollout, TechCrunch reported.

Longer videos, more ads? This development could also lead the way to TikTok offering more advertising, in the form of pre- and mid-roll ads.

Keeps getting longer. In January, TikTok started testing 30-minute video uploads. That followed increases to 15 minutes in 2023 and 10 minutes in 2022.

• At launch, TikTok videos were limited to 15 seconds. TikTok later increased the maximum video length time to 60 seconds, then tripled that to 3 minutes in July 2021.

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Navigating the AI wars: Winning SEO strategies for brands

As the traditional search box becomes obsolete and the vast majority of searches shift to the extreme long tail, SEO will invariably evolve in the future.

It’s actually not such a bold prediction if you have been in the search space for a while. Data has shown time and time again that searchers don’t want to “search” but “find.” AI will finally make that happen, which is why every major tech company is shifting its focus to it.

Those of us who have been around for a while remember the PC war, the OS war, the first browser war, the smartphone war, the second browser war, the search engine war and the smart speaker war.

The AI wars will make them all pale in comparison because AI is the future to which all of those technologies pointed.

Who will win the AI wars?

At this point, it’s anybody’s guess. We know the ones who captured the early buzz, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, X’s Grok and Anthropic’s Claude.

But don’t count out Apple and Amazon, which late in 2023, realized how annoyingly unintelligent Siri and Alexa were and what a goldmine they’d have if they could make them smarter. They announced their own LLMs, Ferret (now MM1) and Project Olympus. 

Don’t count out the countless other AI companies. Will one of them ultimately build a better model than the big companies and either compete with them or be acquired by them? Or will the AI landscape eventually fragment so people learn to go to different LLMs depending on the subject they’re looking for?

While we don’t know exactly who the winners will be just yet, anyone who’s been in search marketing for a while knows exactly what the winning AI will eventually look like. 

Follow the yellow brick road

In L. Frank Baum’s “The Wizard of Oz,” Dorothy finds herself lost and encounters three other lost souls: the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodsman and the Cowardly Lion.

Each of them is missing something.

• A brain
• A heart
• Courage
• Home

All these also happen to be what AI is missing now. 

‘If I only had a brain’: Knowledge

“Some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don’t you think?”

– L. Frank Baumm, “The Wizard of Oz”

While chatbots seem impressive today, if you ask them anything more than a surface level of questions, you’ll quickly find where they lack.

Here’s an example. As a parent, I love the idea of buying toys made in America. It supports local manufacturing jobs, local communities and I find the quality and safety to be better than toys made overseas.

I asked Google Gemini for suggestions for toys made in the U.S. Here’s what it told me.

Here’s the strange thing.

The Manhattan Toy Skwish is made in Thailand, the Nuby Comfort Plush Turtle in China and Mega Bloks, which used to be made in Canada, are now made in Mexico and China. K’NEX labels read “made in China of USA parts.” 

In other words, out of six toys that Google Gemini recommends that are made in the USA, only one is. It’s the Green Toys My First Stack Cup.

OK, Google.

In fairness to Google, none of the other AI chatbots got it right. The problem is the age-old problem of “garbage in, garbage out.”

Google Gemini is tapping Amazon as one of its “authorities” on the subject. But when you go to Amazon’s own toys made in USA search results page (which happens to have ranked in the top 10 of Google’s organic results since the May 2020 core update), you’ll see that out of 75 product listings, nearly half of them are not made in the USA. 

“Experience is the only thing that brings knowledge, and the longer you are on earth the more experience you are sure to get.”

– L. Frank Baumm, “The Wizard of Oz”

While Google may have gotten away with ranking sites in organic search based more on their perceived authority than objective truth, users of their AI won’t be as forgiving.

There’s a reason Google has been stressing E-E-A-T for years, and it hasn’t just been out of the goodness of their hearts. They need E-E-A-T to survive. 

For a query like this, a retailer like FatBrain, which has been accurately cataloging and displaying the country of origin for all its products, will have an outsized advantage over less precise user experiences like Amazon’s. 

AI models that can pull from the most accurate information will have an outsized advantage over their competition, and brands that can produce this information will, too.

‘If I only had a heart’: Empathy

“I had brains and a heart also; so, having tried them both, I should much rather have a heart.”

– L. Frank Baumm, “The Wizard of Oz”

Let’s say you had a question and you know two people who knew the answer. One is brilliant but tends to be pedantic, smug and self-absorbed. This person might give you the right answer but definitely isn’t the most pleasant person to talk to.

The other person may not know quite as much as the first, but takes a genuine interest in what you’re saying, is open-minded, patient and respectful, asks meaningful follow-up questions and doesn’t just deliver you a right answer but does it in a way that you understand and appreciate.

Which of the two would you go to for the answer? Which of the two would you want around you 24/7?

Everyone knows that SEO requires E-E-A-T. But in the coming world of AI, there’s going to be another “E,” which may be the most important factor of all: empathy. 

The winner of the AI war will be a great communicator. While you can see the early attempts of AI companies to give their chatbots a “personality,” all the funniest jokes and most clever side comments will be nothing but annoying if the chatbot can’t – or won’t – understand your question. 

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‘If I only had the nerve’: Courage

“True courage is in facing danger when you are afraid.”

– L. Frank Baumm, “The Wizard of Oz”

In 1998, when Yahoo was at its pinnacle of power, Rick Skrenta and Bob Truel created GnuHoo in response, which later became DMOZ. Yahoo was dominant at the time, and many of us feared that the free and open nature of the Internet would be threatened by any one corporation controlling it. 

In 2002, Dave Hyatt, Joe Hewitt, and Blake Ross started what would become Firefox in response to the increasing pressure of Netscape’s commercial requirements. It later became a bulwark against Microsoft when Internet Explorer won the first browser war.

Ironically, Google eventually controlled and shaped the web by dominating both. Today, Alphabet, Apple, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft (through OpenAI) seem to be looking to control and shape AI. 

Those of us in the search space have witnessed how Google has evolved. While updates like Medic in 2018 did a lot of good in suppressing potentially dangerous YMYL sites, there are lingering questions of whether Google has too much power to elevate established (“authoritative”) voices and drown out legitimate voices in the minority. 

Google’s recent missteps with Gemini further illustrated the potential of what might happen if Google’s internal biases have too much influence on the training and testing of its AI. 

When the United States was established, its founders rooted it in classical liberal principles. All humans are created equal. All humans are born with certain rights, including the freedom to speak, assemble and worship as they please. Those on earth who wielded the greatest power were not to infringe on these rights.

With direct control over the information that 99,000 people a second ask around the world, Google arguably has more power than any government on earth today. The power that whoever wins the AI War will have will be much greater.

Will the winners of the AI war set their principles on classic liberty (i.e., “I may not approve of what you say but I will defend the right to say it”)? Or, to maintain “order,” will they do what so many totalitarian regimes have done in world history by suppressing voices that don’t agree with them, especially those who challenge their power?

Just as it took courage for America’s founders to do what they did – and 250 years later, we are still enjoying the blessings of liberty that they put in place – it will take courage for the winner of the AI war to do the same – or for another DMOZ or Firefox to arise to challenge them.

Home

“No matter how dreary and gray our homes are, we people of flesh and blood would rather live there than in any other country, be it ever so beautiful. There is no place like home.”

– L. Frank Baumm, “The Wizard of Oz”

I’ll end with the same bold prediction I started the last article with. 

Traditional search is going the way of TV, newspaper and radio advertising. At one time, those were the dominant advertising media. They’re still relevant today, but they have a small fraction of the influence they once had.

What will the “new search” look like? It’ll be people asking their robot for an opinion and the robot giving them the best possible answer. No clicks, no SERPs, no ads.

Oh, AI companies will try to inject ads into their answer, but you’ll drop that AI faster than you drop your friend, who takes every conversation to try to sell you into their latest MLM venture.

How do you compete in this new world? How do you survive and thrive as a brand in a world where all searches are zero click, all SERPs are a single result and people won’t be able to skip or block your ads because there won’t be ads to skip or block? 

The ultimate solution is to go back to 1993, the year before Yahoo was founded. 

Build your brand.

Search engines like Google were always just supposed to be a way to get customers into your door. From there, it was really up to you to win them over to your brand and earn their loyalty so the next time they search, they’ll bypass Google and go directly to you. 

In online marketing terms, if you look at your website traffic and see that your direct traffic is growing, you’re in good shape. But if your direct traffic has been shrinking while your traffic from other channels is growing, you’re in trouble. 

In 1993, businesses grew by building great products, taking care of their customers and relying mostly on word-of-mouth to promote their brands. 

In 2024, the most successful businesses still do it this way. 

When I asked ChatGPT, Grok and Gemini where the best place to buy books is, they all mentioned Amazon. Why? Because they’d look foolish if they said anything else.

Amazon didn’t pay the AI models to mention them, and the latter didn’t arbitrarily decide to promote Amazon. These AI models looked around them and saw that more people buy books from Amazon than anywhere else and that people generally have good things to say about their experience.

There is one thing that will always be more powerful than AI, and that’s free and independent human thought.

If you want to be known as the best widget company, your job is not to convince AI or even Google that you’re the best. Your job is to convince your customers. Like any other expert, AI’s opinion will be questioned if it capriciously contradicts public opinion.

In fairness to Google, every bit of SEO advice they’ve ever given was always about building your brand, from title tag optimization to Core Web Vitals to building links to E-E-A-T. These are all things you should have always been doing as a brand, not for Google’s sake but for your customers. 

Assuming that the winner of the AI wars has a good brain, a good heart and courage, we’ll be back home to a place where building your brand is back to being the most important ranking factor – which it always was.

Dig deeper: Modern SEO: Packaging your brand and marketing for Google

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How to archive your Universal Analytics historical data

Another Google Analytics 4 migration project deadline is fast approaching, and this deadline is hard set. On July 1, Google will delete all historical data from Universal Analytics properties. This deadline also affects Analytics 360 customers.

With little more than a month until the deadline, if you have not done so by now, your organization needs to prioritize archiving your historical data. There are three main phases I recommend for approaching this project.

Phase 1: Make a plan

Before archiving data, it’s important to decide:

What specific data is important to you? 

• Prioritize downloading data that you regularly refer to, such as conversion and sales data.
• Make a full list of the data you need to archive.

How many years of data do you want to keep?

• Many of us have been using Google Analytics since the mid-2000s – does your organization need to archive data from nearly 20 years ago? 
• Decide how far back you want to archive data from. I recommend, at minimum, to consider archiving back to 2018 or so to ensure you have pre-pandemic data since the pandemic really presented data anomalies for many companies.

At what cadence do you review data?

• Consider how often you typically report on your data. Is it weekly? Monthly? 
• Depending on the archiving method you choose in Phase 2, you may need to organize the data into specific time increments.

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Phase 2: Choose an archiving method

There are three main options available for archiving your Universal Analytics data. Each has its own pros and cons, so choose a method based on your team’s resources and skills.

Option 1: Manual file downloads

• Pros: Easy for almost all users to do, free
• Cons: Time-consuming, cumbersome, difficult to access data for reporting later, limited to 5000 rows

While this is the easiest process to understand, it is also time consuming.

Following your plan for years, cadence and data points, you’ll need to go into each report in the Google Universal Analytics interface, set the date, dimension and metric settings as needed.

Also, remember to change the number of rows from the default of 10 to the maximum of 5,000 rows to ensure you capture as much data as possible.

Click the export button and export data to a Google Sheet, Excel or CSV. Repeat this process until you have downloaded all of the data identified in your archive plan.

Option 2: Download data to Google Sheets using the Google Analytics add-on (best option for tech novices)

• Pros: Fairly simple to implement for most users with spreadsheet experience, free, fast to download.
• Cons: Restrictive to a set timeframe (e.g., monthly), each sheet has total data limitations, often encounters sampling issues.

This option is fairly simple for most users to perform. Create a new Google Sheet and add the Google Analytics spreadsheetadd-on.

The add-on essentially uses the Google Analytics API to download data to Google Sheets but doesn’t require API programming knowledge to operate. Google has compiled a basic overview of this approach in this help document.

The first time you use the add-on, you’ll build a report using the add-on’s interface. But after the first report has been run, you can also simply update the Report Configuration tab and create additional reports directly in columns of that sheet.

You can also conveniently use formulas in the Report Configuration sheet. Use the Dimensions and Metrics Explorer to find the proper API code to enter into each field. 

One drawback of the Google Sheets method is that you may encounter sampling if you pull too much data at once (e.g., your entire 20-year dataset for sessions) or your report is too detailed (too many dimensions pulled together for a high level of granularity). 

When you run a report, you’ll see the sampling level on the report’s data tab in cell B6. If your report contains sampled data, you may want to consider reducing the amount of data in this particular pull, for example, you might split the pull into two time frames.

However, if you just can’t avoid sampling, check the data sample percentage on the report. Then, on the Report Configuration tab, unhide rows 14-17 and the sampling size on row 15 to this level so that your data remains consistent.

Tip: The add-on defaults to 1,000 lines of data in a report. Simply delete the 1,000 under the line labeled “Limit” (typically row 11).

Another drawback of the Google Sheets option is that each file is limited to 10,000,000 cells. Typically, each sheet starts out with 26 columns (A to Z) and 1,000 default rows (or 26,000 cells).

If your downloaded data exceeds the 10,000,000 cell limitation (which can very likely happen), then you may need to have multiple Google Sheets to download all of the data.

Option 3: Download data using the Google Analytics API

• Pros: Pulls data quickly once set up
• Cons: Requires web development knowledge and resources, doesn’t solve the data sampling issue, API quota limitations

If you have web development resources that can work on the archiving project, they can pull the data detailed in your plan using the Google Analytics API directly. 

This works similarly to the aforementioned Google Sheets add-on option, but it’s a more manual process in programming the API calls.

To learn about how to use the API for this project, visit Google’s archiving information page and review the second bullet, which details several resources and considerations for using the API for this data export project.

Option 4: Download data to BigQuery (best option overall)

• Pros: Simple to access data later for reporting, increased data insights, most flexible for data
• Cons: Complicated for novices to set up initially, can involve fees for BiqQuery, may require technical resources to set up, need to involve an additional tool

The main benefit of archiving your Universal Analytics data to BigQuery is that BigQuery is a data warehouse that allows you to ask questions of the data set through SQL queries to get your data very quickly. This is especially useful in accessing this data for reporting later. 

Analytics 360 users

If you are an Analytics 360 user, Google provides a native export to BigQuery. I recommend this method. See instructions from Google.

Everyone else

If you’re not an Analytics 360 user, then you’ll need to approach the BigQuery backup differently because Google does not provide innate BigQuery backup options in Universal Analytics for non-360 users. 

Here are the steps you’ll want to follow:

• Step 1: Create a Google API Console project and enable BigQuery.
  • Log in to the Google APIs Console.
  • Create a Google APIs Console project.
  • Navigate to the APIs table.
  • Activate BigQuery.
• Step 2: Prepare your project for BigQuery export.
  • Ensure Billing is enabled for your project. You may not need to pay anything, but it will vary depending on the usage and data you have.
  • If prompted, create a billing account.
  • Accept the free trial if it’s available.
  • Validate Billing enablement. Open your project at https://console.cloud.google.com/bigquery, and try to create a data set in the project. Click the blue arrow next to the project name, then click Create data set. If you can create the data set, billing is setup correctly. If there are any errors, make sure billing is enabled.
  • Add the service account to your project. Add analytics-processing-dev@system.gserviceaccount.com as a member of the project, and ensure that permission at the project level is set to Editor (as opposed to BigQuery Data Editor). The Editor role is required in order to export data from Analytics to BigQuery.
  • If you are in the EU, please also review additional requirements.
• Step 3: Set up a free trial of Supermetrics. Similar to the Google Sheets add-on in option 2 above, Supermetrics is a tool that helps non-technical users interface with and use APIs. They offer a free 14-day trial, which is likely all you’ll need for this project since you’re only downloading the Universal Analytics data once (not regularly).
  • Connect the BigQuery data source in the Supermetrics dashboard. 
• Step 4: In BigQuery, establish the connection to Supermetrics.
  • Navigate to BigQuery, then to Data transfers.
  • Click + Create transfer.
  • Select your Google Analytics by Supermetrics as your source and click Enroll. 
  • Fill in the transfer details. See detailed instructions on how to set up a transfer.
  • Under Third-party connection, click Connect source.
  • Accept the agreement.
  • Click Authorize with your Google data source.
  • Click Sign in with Google.
  • Sign in with the Google Account you use with this data source. This doesn’t have to be the same as the Google Account you use with Supermetrics.
  • Click Allow.
  • Select the accounts you’d like to include in your reporting and define the transfer settings.
  • Click Submit.
  • Click Save.

Because you only need to transfer the Universal Analytics data one time, you can also change the schedule on the transfer to On demand and then run the transfer now. 

Phase 3: Ensure you’ve captured it all

Before you consider the project complete, be sure to double-check your archived data to ensure you’ve captured everything you planned to archive.

On July 1, you will no longer be able to access Universal Analytics data, either by API or through the interface. 

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Netflix ads tier hits 40 million subscribers

Netflix’s ad-supported tier is rapidly gaining traction, reaching 40 million monthly users globally, the streamer announced at its 2024 Upfront presentation.

The paid ad offering, initially seen as a risky move, has quickly become a hit for Netflix as it seeks new revenue streams amid intensifying streaming competition.

Why we care. Netflix’s platform offers advertisers a large and expanding pool of potential customers. If you’re looking for new advertising opportunities, you may want to explore streaming audiences.

Driving the news. Just six months after hitting 5 million ad-supported subscribers post-launch in late 2022, that number has now swelled to 40 million.

• In regions where the ad tier is available, over 40% of new Netflix sign-ups are opting for the cheaper ad-supported plan.
• The service now has 270 million total subscribers across all its pricing tiers.

Between the lines. Netflix is doubling down on the ad business by bringing its ad tech in-house. 

• It’s launching its own advertising platform to “power the ads plan with the same level of excellence” as its streaming tech, per Netflix’s president of advertising Amy Reinhard.
• While initially partnering solely with Microsoft, Netflix is now also tapping Google, The Trade Desk and Magnite for its ad sales and tech.

What they’re saying. “Our ad membership has been an overwhelming success,” Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said during the presentation. “We’re just getting started on that journey.”

The bottom line. Netflix’s ability to rapidly scale its ad business demonstrates the power of its brand and content – signaling a secure new revenue pipeline as it branches further into advertising.

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A better approach to B2B lead gen in 2024

B2B advertising, with its long sales cycles and relatively thin data density, has never been easy. And the tracking upheaval from cookies disappearing is about to make it harder.

That means that some of the pervasive flaws I’ve seen in inheriting B2B lead gen accounts over the years are about to produce even shakier results. 

Even without talking about cookies and alternative measurement set-ups, there’s a better path forward for lead gen in 2024. This article will examine:

• What brands still get wrong about their lead gen fundamentals.
• How to align the offer and the funnel stage.
• How to align the channel mix and the funnel stage.
• How to qualify users with content.

What brands are getting wrong about lead gen

The single biggest mistake I see brands making with lead gen is misjudging (or ignoring) the intent of the lead.

A common example here is asking a cold prospect to request a demo, which is a leap of faith that will very rarely be rewarded with positive ROI or pestering prospects that download content to engage with sales.

The second big mistake is that brands will stop measuring beyond the lead, which leads to misappropriating budget and clear blind spots in performance.

Movement between funnel stages, lead quality and lead progression to MQLs > SQLs > opportunities > closed deals are all vital for lead gen marketers to understand. This lets you assess your campaigns’ performance and optimization priorities – and spend your budget where it will have the biggest impact on the bottom line.

Dig deeper: Top 5 paid search B2B lead gen strategies for 2024

How to align your offer with the user’s funnel stage

I use this chart all the time with my clients (and sometimes in my articles for Search Engine Land):

The top of the funnel is about educating and relating to the user:

• What they need to learn.
• What challenges they need to solve.
• What they need to know about their problem.

At this point, it’s about relating to their pain points and starting to build trust more than what they need to solve than they do about who’s solving it for them.

The middle of the funnel starts tying solutions to problems and introduces your brand as the option:

• Why your solution works.
• How it’s different from your competitors.
• The results you’ve driven for brands with similar challenges.

This stage assumes the user has their head around their challenge and is now actively researching solutions to help.

The bottom of the funnel brings in more emotion and third-party proof. This stage assumes the users have a shortlist of solutions in mind and are looking for reassurance, from case studies and testimonials, that yours is the one for them. This is also when you can start leaning on urgency, with limited sales windows or expiring promotions.

The most important thing to remember from all of this is that thoughtful nurturing is key to good lead gen. If you’re using bottom-funnel tactics for people who haven’t heard of you yet, you’re only wasting time and possibly turning users off from your brand.

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How to align the channel mix and the funnel stage

Top-of-funnel channels

Starting with awareness/top-of-funnel targeting should mean starting on LinkedIn (and, for some brands with access to the right audiences, possibly on Facebook). 

My first option is always to start with LinkedIn prospecting because:

• Costs are cheaper for top-of-funnel engagement than they are for lead generation or conversion.
• LinkedIn’s company-based targeting means you can go fairly broad and still stay within your ICP. 

LinkedIn is a great place for educating users and positioning your brand as a thought leader; people go to LinkedIn to consume content, perhaps in the form of thought leader ads, and are open to high-quality, informative engagements.

I approach Facebook prospecting with caution, but it can be worth testing depending on the audience. 

Middle-of-funnel and retargeting channels

Once someone has engaged with your brand and content, you should have started to narrow your audience.

Whether you’re retargeting content engagers or focused on accounts that have engaged with sales in some way or piped-in audiences from tools like Clearbit or 6Sense, I recommend choosing the following combinations of ad types and channels:

• LinkedIn sponsored content and conversation ads.
• Facebook and Instagram in-feed ads or video ads, with messaging that aligns with your audience and funnel stage.

Given my thoughts on Facebook prospecting, you might be surprised at my preference here. But you’ve already defined the audience.

Facebook/Instagram can help expand your audience matching scope beyond LinkedIn (where we’ve seen plenty of audience match degradation), and retargeting costs tend to be lower.

Bottom-of-funnel channels

Focusing on users who have engaged with high-intent content or visited your site multiple times is a crucial audience for this stage.

Ensuring coverage for paid search and high-intent SEO queries are the bread and butter for capturing intent at this stage, but paid social is a great way to generate that last step of intent by using social proof like case studies, testimonials, etc. – and sealing the deal with demo offers. 

These will be your highest engagement costs of the campaign, and they should be, since leads at this stage are (assuming you’ve qualified them along the way) extremely valuable.

Dig deeper: How to implement a full-funnel PPC marketing strategy

How to qualify users with content

This happens throughout the funnel, and lots of this work is done with the type of content you’re offering.

For instance, your content should help the platforms’ bidding and targeting algorithms identify the audience’s pain points, solutions, etc. (Facebook’s algorithm can do this, but it doesn’t have the all-important layer of company targeting that LinkedIn does.)

There can also be ways to increase engagement within your ICP by speaking directly to them in your copy. Identifying opportunities to call out your audience in messaging is a great tactic.

For example, if you’re targeting CFOs, try “CFOs’ Favorite Answer to {Challenge} in 2024” or something similar that lets them know your content is for them.

The bonus here is that the more tightly you align your messaging with your ICP, the more you can delineate who falls outside your ICP and shouldn’t bother engaging with your ad.

Dig deeper: Paid search for lead gen: Tips for new accounts with limited budgets

Aligning tactics to intent: A better B2B lead gen approach

Above all, remember to consider the user’s mentality when developing your lead gen campaigns.

Don’t:

• Ask for too much too early.
• Get silly with retargeting frequency.
• Bother spending for bottom-funnel engagement without so much as a how-do-you-do. 

Cookies or not, adhering to those principles will help you eliminate a lot of waste from your lead gen campaigns and keep your brand from developing a pushy reputation.

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How to run a successful site migration from start to finish

A site migration can feel like packing up your entire house and moving across the country. There’s much to keep track of, and you don’t want to lose any valuable possessions (or, in this case, SEO progress) along the way. 

When done right, a site migration is a chance to improve site performance, enhance user experience and boost search presence.

However, with countless moving parts and multiple teams involved, having an organized plan is essential for a smooth transition. 

To nail it, you need a rock-solid plan and a dedication to doing things right.

In this article:

• What is a site migration?
• Why is SEO important in site migrations?
• Preparing for your site migration
• Managing and optimizing the new site structure and content
• Improving user experience
• Managing links
• Monitoring technical SEO
• Managing post-launch activities
• Continuously refining

What is a site migration?

A site migration refers to the process of making major changes involving a website. 

This might include moving a site to a new domain or hosting provider, switching to a different content management system (CMS) or merging multiple websites into one.

Why is SEO important in site migrations?

Some people may wonder what SEO has to do with moving a site. 

A site migration with SEO built into it can preserve rankings, avoid traffic loss, retain link equity, improve user experience and uncover new opportunities to improve the site. A site migration without SEO is laced with assumptions and poor decisions and can lead to a near-death traffic loss.

To illustrate how, when done right, SEO built into a site migration can massively impact search performance, see the image below. 

After this client’s site migrated about mid-April 2023, they experienced the following results when comparing February 2023 to August 2023:

• A 455% increase in daily traffic.
• A 78% increase in top 10 rankings, with the top three rankings going from 8,081 to 13,591.
• Zero SERP features to 1,496 SERP features.

Preparing for your site migration

Before you jump into the deep end, take the time to plan: 

• Define your goals and objectives. Whatever your website migration goals, document them and the steps needed to make them a reality. Get specific and make your targets measurable. This will help guide your efforts and give you a clear way to evaluate success post-migration.
• Conduct a thorough SEO audit. A thorough SEO audit assesses the site’s strengths and pinpoints areas for improvement. Part of this involves tracking your site’s current rankings, traffic levels and engagement metrics using tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console and others.
• Come up with a project plan. Map out a detailed project plan. Break the migration into phases, assign roles and responsibilities and set realistic deadlines. (Don’t forget to build in time for testing and troubleshooting. Migrations rarely go off without a hitch, so planning for the unexpected is key.)

Google gives some additional best practice tips for managing a site move, including splitting your move into smaller steps, changing only one thing at a time and timing the move to coincide with lower-traffic times. 

Dig deeper: 12 SEO pitfalls to avoid during a website platform migration

Managing and optimizing the new site structure and content

How people and search engines access your content, and what type of content you publish are both important to your SEO program moving forward.

Site structure

A well-organized site structure enhances user experience and helps search engines understand the relationships between your pages.

Think about how you might restructure and streamline your site’s navigation for the relaunch. 

This will require taking a look at your target keywords and mapping them to the navigation and content. 

Group related content together in a logical hierarchy, making it easy for website visitors and search engines to find exactly what they need.

I call this SEO siloing, and the benefits include:

• Creating a good user experience can result in more time spent on the website.
• Helping search engines determine relevance, which positions the site for ranking for target keywords.

The goal is to have the top of each silo (navigational category) be based on the more generic keywords and to build a hierarchy of subpages that support that keyword topic.

The picture above shows a sample structure for SEO siloing on a fictional power tools website. 

The main categories are cordless power tools, electric power tools and gas-powered tools. The supporting subpages are shown underneath.

Content

Now onto the content that fills the pages on your site. As you head into a site migration, it’s a perfect opportunity to make improvements.

The goal is to ensure the quality of your content when you relaunch. 

Here are some tips as you review the content on your site:

• Review top-performing webpages and be sure to prioritize those. For pages that aren’t performing, decide if they need a rewrite, need to be merged or 301 redirected.
• Assess the content with some guidelines in mind, such as Google’s E-E-A-T principles and its advice on helpful content. 
• Review all content to make sure that it is evergreen and thorough. If it can be updated, do it. If entire topics are out of date, flag those to do a 301 redirect on them later on. 
• Consider merging multiple pages on a similar or same topic into one more extensive guide on the topic. (Don’t forget to 301 redirect URLs later).
• Ensure that your new site’s content is optimized for your target keywords. Optimize titles, headings, meta descriptions and body content. 
• Address duplicate content issues. Duplicate content can happen for multiple reasons, including trailing slashes on URLs, CMS problems, content that is too similar, boilerplate content and more. 

If you need to add new content before the site migration, consider using AI content tools for efficiency—but be careful to follow search engine guidelines. 

See my article on how to survive the search results when you’re using AI tools for content.

Improving user experience

Prior to a site migration is a good time to assess user experience factors on your site and make any adjustments moving forward. 

Review Core Web Vitals

• Google’s Core Web Vitals focus on the responsiveness, speed and interactivity of a site. Benchmarking and seeing what may be improved on your current site is a good step before relaunching a new site.
• Google gives more insights in a help file here, and you can view the Core Web Vitals report in Google Search Console. Prioritize adjustments based on your available resources. 

Mobile-friendliness

• Ensuring your site is optimized for mobile means things like having a responsive design, touch-friendly navigation, creating and formatting content with mobile readers in mind and much more. 

Improving accessibility

• Evaluating and improving accessibility on your website can ensure your site is usable for people with disabilities.
• The gold standard for complying with accessibility is W3.org’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Prioritize minimum requirements first.

Enhancing security

• Some things you can do to improve the security of your site are evaluating your server / hosting provider (this may be a reason for your site move anyway), implementing HTTPS and updating software, plugins and authentication protocols. 

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Managing links

Properly mapping and redirecting URLs is essential for maintaining SEO value during a site migration. Without careful planning, you risk losing link equity. 

Create a detailed spreadsheet that lists every old URL and its corresponding new URL. This redirect map will serve as a blueprint for implementing 301 redirects and ensuring no pages are lost in the transition.

Be sure to account for changes in site structure, URL naming conventions and content consolidation. A thorough redirect map is your best defense against broken links and lost SEO value.

Work with your development team to ensure that redirects are configured correctly: 

• Steer clear of redirect traps like using short-term 302s instead of permanent 301s, creating messy chains or loops and forgetting that URLs are case-sensitive.
• Prior to launch, thoroughly test your redirects to ensure they are working as intended. Use tools like the SEOToolSet (full disclosure, this is my company’s SEO software) or Screaming Frog to crawl your old URLs and verify that they are being properly redirected to the correct new URLs.
  Pay special attention to your most important pages, such as your home page, top-level categories and high-traffic blog posts. 

Mapping your 301s is just one part of managing your links before a site migration. This is also a good time to review your inbound link profile. 

Get rid of any links that may not serve your site well moving forward and identify new link opportunities for the site.

Monitoring technical SEO

Monitoring all aspects of technical SEO before and during a site migration is vital for site health and search engine visibility. 

Here are some tasks to check off your list:

Review design modifications

• Changes to website design can impact SEO–one example is the coding aspect of building a site. Review design plans to make sure they support SEO objectives.

Audit your tracking tools

• Confirm that Google Analytics tracking is correctly configured. Moving to GA4 can be complicated, consider hiring analytics experts if necessary.
• Also, ensure Google Search Console is configured for your site. 

Back up your existing site

• As a precautionary measure, back up your entire website – especially the XML Sitemap. Trust me, you need this. Download all images and other resources, and save a copy of your database if relevant.

Establish a test environment

• It’s common practice among web developers to create a separate testing environment to experiment with changes before making them live.
• Ensure this is set up and that search engines are blocked from indexing this staging area.

Validate structured data

• Examine and rectify any issues with structured data on your pages using tools like Google’s structured data testing tools.

Review metadata

• Ensure titles and meta descriptions are unique with original content and are correctly optimized. 

Review robots directives

• Recheck the setup of your robots.txt file to ensure it is correctly blocking or allowing access as intended. 

Create and manage sitemaps

• Develop a new HTML sitemap to aid users in navigating the new site smoothly.
• To some, this next point may seem counterintuitive, but it’s important: The second the new site is live, submit the old XML sitemap you archived earlier. This causes the search engines to find your redirects instantly. 

Carry out launch day tasks

• On launch day, crawl the website to identify and resolve any emerging issues right away, such as crawl errors.
• Recommended tools include SEOToolSet’s site spider, Lumar and Screaming Frog. You can also use the various testing features in Search Console. 

Managing post-launch activities

You’ve made it through the site migration process, but the work isn’t over yet. Keeping a close eye on your site’s performance in the weeks and months following the move is important. 

Testing

The first step in post-migration testing is to conduct a comprehensive review of your site’s functionality. 

This means testing every page, link, form and feature to ensure that everything is working as intended. 

Give your website a thorough once-over by focusing on these vital areas:

• Navigation and internal linking.
• Forms and contact pages.
• Ecommerce functionality (if applicable).
• Mobile responsiveness and usability.
• Integrations with third-party tools or services.
• Site speed and responsiveness.

As you test, make note of any issues or errors you encounter and prioritize fixing them based on their impact on user experience and site performance. 

Watching key metrics

With your tracking tools in place, it’s time to monitor your site’s performance and organic traffic levels. 

Keep a close eye on your daily and weekly traffic in Google Analytics. It’s normal to see some temporary fluctuations after a migration, but if you notice a sustained drop in organic traffic, it’s time to investigate further.

Another key metric to monitor post-migration is your site’s keyword rankings and overall search visibility. Use SEO tools like Ahrefs to track your rankings for target keywords and monitor any changes over time.

Enhancing user experience

Beyond functionality, it’s important to take a holistic look at your site’s user experience and engagement post-migration. 

Are visitors finding what they need easily? Are they engaging with your content and converting at the rates you expect?

You can use your analytics tools to dive into behavioral metrics such as goal completions, bounce rates and more.

If you notice a drop in conversions or engagement, dig deeper to identify potential issues or roadblocks. 

Is there a particular page or step in your conversion funnel where users drop off? Are there certain user segments or traffic sources that are underperforming?

Consider reviewing the following areas that may need user experience improvement:

• Improving navigation and site structure.
• Optimizing content layout and readability.
• Enhancing calls-to-action and conversion points.
• Ensuring mobile-friendliness and responsiveness.
• Adding engaging visual elements and media.

You can use things like heat maps and surveys to get inside your visitors’ heads. Look for trends and sticking points, then use that data to fine-tune your site’s user experience. 

Continuously refining

Once you’ve completed a successful site migration, the real adventure begins. 

You’ll continue to keep a close eye on your site, run tests and make tweaks to ensure that it’s always performing at its best and delivering an exceptional user experience.

With a commitment to improvement, you can ensure that your migrated site survives and thrives in its new home for the long haul.

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How to reappeal a Google Business Profile suspension

If you run a local business and find that your Google Business Profile has been suspended, it can have a devastating effect on your business.

Your phone may stop ringing. Customers may stop coming to your location. The loss of revenue is real.

Your first instinct may be to panic and just go through the motions of filling out the Appeals tool without thinking too much about the consequences. But you must know what you’re doing before you start that process.

Read this entire article before you start the appeals process and learn what to do if your appeal is denied. 

Common reasons your GBP listing might be suspended 

When your business listing gets suspended, you might be wondering why. Here are some common reasons GBP listings get suspended:

• Keyword stuffing your business name.
• Using a P.O. Box or UPS store address.
• You set up your listing at a virtual office or co-working space address.
• You have a Service Area Business (SAB) and are displaying a physical address.
• You have an online-only business.
• You are in a high-risk business category, like lawyers, plumbers, HVAC, locksmiths, rehab centers, etc.
• If another business shares your same address – especially if it’s a residential address.
• You have made a bunch of changes/edits to your GBP profile in one sitting.
• The URL you add to your GBP profile forwards/redirects to another website or links to a social media page.
• If you change your listing from a Storefront to a SAB – or vice versa.
• Having multiple GBPs in an area that has service areas overlapping.
• Your address or hours don’t match what is listed on your website or other online business directories/citations.
• You list your business hours as 24/7.
• A manager on your listing had their account suspended – so your listing was also suspended.
• You created multiple listings for the same business at the same address.
• You violated the terms of service of some other Google tool or service.
• You have an account violation, like your email account being suspended.

Sometimes, you may not have even committed a violation, as Google just wants to verify that you are a legitimate business. This may be because you are in a duress category, such as locksmiths, HVACs, lawn care, lawyers, etc. 

If you’ve violated a guideline, you must fix the problem with your business listing before you can proceed with the appeals process.

Dig deeper: How to follow Google Business Profile guidelines

How to appeal your suspended Google Business Profile

The first reaction for most businesses when their business listing gets suspended is to panic and to just click on the Appeals tool link and go through the motions. That’s not the best approach. 

• Thoroughly read the Help Support document when appealing your suspended profile. This document contains crucial information about the appeal process and what you need to do to appeal your suspension.
• If you’re unsure what violation you may have on your GBP listing or if you’re uncertain that your supporting documents will meet Google’s requirements, it’s best to hire a Google Business Profile Product Expert before you do anything.

If you file the appeal and are denied due to sending the wrong documents or not fixing the information on your GBP listing, you may be denied and prevented from having a Google Business Profile. Period. 

No one can guarantee reinstatement, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.

Be patient. Doing it correctly is better than panicking and doing this process incorrectly.

Dig deeper. Google Business Profile: The new suspension appeal process

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What to do if your Google Business Profile appeal is denied

After the Appeals tool is filled out, many businesses see the dreaded Not Approved status in the Appeals Tool and receive the email that states their Appeal was not approved.

So, what do you do if your appeal is denied?

You can request Google take an additional review of your suspended GBP listing and submit supporting documents.

The documents you can submit are:

• Official business registration
• A business license
• Tax certificates
• Utility bills for the business such as:
  • Electricity
  • Phone
  • Water
  • Internet

For the additional review, I always recommend submitting more documents and/or photos than you did in the original appeal. This will provide more evidence for Google’s consideration. For instance, if you didn’t provide a Tax certificate in your Appeal, include your Tax Certificate in this additional review.

If you have a storefront business, provide photos of your permanent signage, which will prove to Google that you have a legitimate store. If you have a service area business, provide photos of your branded vehicles, which you use for business purposes.

Remember, you can upload zipped files. Prepare all your documents and photos before you take the next steps.

Tip: For any documents you submit as evidence, check and make sure that the business name and address exactly match your Google Business Profile.

Here’s how you can request an additional review of your appeal case.

First, make sure that you’re logged into the email you use to manage your Google Business Profile, then go to the request additional review form. There, you will need to fill out all the fields:

Be sure to fill in the narrative box explaining what you did to fix your business listing and what documents and photos you provided that prove you are a legitimate business.

Providing a direct link to your Secretary of State business listing is a good idea. Additionally, if you have an accredited Better Business Bureau listing, provide the link to your BBB listing, too. 

Anyone who is an owner or manager on your GBP listing can fill out this form; it doesn’t have to be the same person who filled out the original Appeals tool form. 

After filling out this form, allow up to five days before you receive an email with the review results. Keep in mind that the results of this re-evaluation will not be reflected in the Appeals tool. You should receive a case ID in the email you receive.

The email will let you know if your appeal has been approved or not.

One final chance

This one final chance to have Google look at additional evidence you didn’t provide in the original Appeals tool is your last chance to prove to Google that you’re a legitimate business.

Take this whole process seriously. To increase the likelihood of your Google Business Profile getting reinstated, make sure:

• The documents and photos you provide are the correct ones needed.
• You fix any violations your GBP listing may have.

You only have two chances to get your suspended Google Business Profile reinstated. Do things the correct way.

Dig deeper: How Google Business Profile pre-defined services can impact local SEO

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