Paid Media
Updates by Director of Paid Media, Casey Anderson
No More Amazon in Shopping Ads
Yay?! Ecommerce advertisers using Google Shopping will likely take this as a win, at least as it relates to impressions and visibility within Google Shopping, but the million dollar question – will this be forever? It would seem that no one knows for sure. When a giant like Amazon pulls out from advertising, there are big revenue losses for Google and perhaps even brands advertising on Amazon. It’s a real headscratcher and a major shakeup in the industry.
However, some experts are saying that now is the perfect time for brands and agencies to keep a competitive edge. Since Amazon has been one of the top auction competitors, winning out on others’ brand terms in many cases, this feels like a welcome change.
While it’s likely Amazon will come back to Google at some point, we’re going to use this reprieve to our advantage and try to capture traffic and sales that might otherwise go to Amazon.
Search Term Categories for RSAs
Once again, Google is trying to simplify life by giving us more data reporting to work with. Since its rollout of asset performance reporting at the ad level (which is kind of great), it’s started testing a new feature that groups search queries into categories for aggregated performance metrics based on search intent.
This information will appear with asset level reporting, so “search terms that triggered your RSAs [Responsive Search Ads] in the past 56 days are analyzed and categorized by intent and attributes. These insights appear in the RSA asset details view and are especially valuable for Broad Match targeting, where intent often outweighs precise keyword matching.” (Search Engine Land)
These additions are intended to give more purpose to and better results from RSA optimization, offering both more clarity on sitelink extensions and other assets being used in ads, as well as keywords that are triggering action. This is yet another intentional value-add to broad match. And it should help advertisers working tirelessly to maintain relevant searches within an ever-expanding broad match ecosystem.
TikTok is Coming in Hot with Search Ads Expansion
We’ve known for over a year now that TikTok is ready to step up its game in search advertising, but up until recently there hasn’t been a ton of chatter about what is happening internally to make this jump from social ads to search ads. At the end of July, however, TikTok announced major hirings for its Search Ads department. These new job openings will position the social media giant to hit the ground running in an intent-based channel.
This means that in due time we should see some big changes in how TikTok is being used for advertising. Advertisers who might not have considered TikTok as a potential channel could be looking at it in a new light. If your business is strong in paid search, you could be looking at another performance-driven channel to scale your success and diversify your ad spend.
SEO
Google experiments with Web Guide, a new search feature
Web Guide is a new experimental search feature that in Google’s words “uses AI to intelligently organize the search results page, making it easier to find information and web pages.” Web Guide is currently only accessible to certain users who have signed up for Search Labs.
Web Guide uses a custom version of Gemini to take users’ initial queries and run multiple related searches to serve a more curated and personalized search landscape. Andrea Volpini wrote a great LinkedIn post that provides a clear example of what this looks like in practice:
“Your broad query (like “tips for getting started with photography”) isn’t treated as one search. Google’s AI breaks it down into multiple, smarter sub-queries on the backend (i.e., “camera basics,” “composition techniques,” “lighting tips”).”
The multi-query is similar to what we know happens with AI Mode, but the display of Web Guide is different, as it appears to better feature website results, rather than AI-generated text.
If and when it’s rolled out to Search, this will likely be helpful to users. Instead of serving results that best match the query you typed, Google will try to get at the core intent of your search and serve you results that are likely helpful to your end goal but not exactly what you initially searched for. And as Andrea mentions in his post, these results are personalized for your account, location, and device.
– Brett Woodward, Sr. SEO
AI Mode Now Allows For File Uploads
Users can upload files in AI mode to get results related to uploads. This currently includes image files, and will soon include PDFs in the coming weeks. Additional types of files will eventually be supported, such as files from Google Drive.
Google is actively molding AI Mode to be a research hub that users don’t have to leave until their queries are satisfied. Understanding how these changes may influence user journey behaviors for your brand will be key in understanding if you need to shift content and UX strategies to satisfy their journey endpoints.
– Randy McFadden, Sr. SEO
Analytics
Our monthly analytics updates has its own blog, the Analytics Roundup. This month, Two Octobers’ Head of Analytics Nico Brooks covers:
- His experience with the new Google Analytics MCP server and a Claude Project. (We love it!)
- Google Trends now has an API.
- Great articles about analytics & AI from around the web.
