Facebook's updated search product was launched for iOS, web and mobile web in December. It's still only available for users of the U.S. English language setting.
Android users, left out when Facebook launched its revamped search product in December, are finally being included. Late last night, we received a notification on an Android phone that it is now possible to find posts that have been shared in the social network.
Today, a Facebook spokesperson confirmed that the rollout on Android has begun, and that it would continue in the coming weeks.
In December, Facebook rebranded Graph Search as Facebook Search on the web, mobile Facebook site and iOS devices. It’s only available for users using the U.S. English language setting.
Facebook Search gives users the ability to search within posts shared with them, by friends and pages that they follow. Facebook said in December that the search-within-posts functionality was users’ top feature request during nearly two years of testing of Graph Search. They were less interested in being able to search within all public posts, which had been the original plan.
yahoo Bing Network gains share for third straight quarter.
The first quarter of 2015 was a strong one for the US paid search market. Year-over-year growth of 26 percent marks the highest increase in three years and the third-highest rate since advertising technology firm IgnitionOne began recording performance.
Bing Ads continued its growth streak among advertisers on the IgnitionOne platform. Advertising spend share on Bing Ads rose to 26.9 percent compared to Google’s 73.1 percent share. (More on that below.)
IgnitionOne cites the improving US economy and rising cost-per-click (CPCs) in mobile for the strong growth seen in the past two quarters. Spending on smartphones rose 81 percent from Q1 2014.
Overall, CPCs rose 21 percent year-over-year, with Google CPCs up 23 percent and Bing Ads up 15 percent. IgnitionOne adds that Google’s change to require “close variant matching” last September (exact and phrase match keywords can trigger ads for close variants and plurals and misspellings of these keywords) also led to higher CPCs.
Quarter-over-quarter, ad spend rose 10 percent and CPCs were up 21 percent even after coming off a strong holiday season.
Impressions Fall As More Advertisers Back Out Of Google Partner Network
Overall impressions were down 20 percent for the quarter, the result, again, of more of IgnitionOne’s customers pulling out of the Google Partner Network. Impressions from the search partner network were off by 46 percent, clicks were down 25 percent and ad spend fell by 11 percent.
In contrast, participation on the Yahoo Bing Partner Network has been increasing. Impressions rose 46 percent and spend was up 30 percent year-over-year on the partner network. IgnitionOne notes that the flexibility in being able to exclude poor performing partner sites on the Yahoo Bing Partner Network — unlike Google, which is an all or nothing opt-in — allows for greater efficiencies.
Bing Ads Gains Share, Slowly
The numbers aren’t earth shattering, but the three-consecutive quarters of growth in market share by Bing Ads is notable.
Q1 marks the highest spend share Bing Ads has seen since the Yahoo Bing Network formed in 2010 and the lowest share for Google since 2008 among IgnitionOne customers.
As China's search revenue share continues to grow, Google will largely be missing out while its sites are blocked on the mainland.
Google continues to dominate the global search market with 54.7 percent of search ad revenues worldwide in 2014. But mainland China’s ban on Google is giving Baidu, the search leader in that country, a huge advantage. Baidu will see its global share of search ad revenues increase from 6.4 percent in 2013 to 8.8 percent in 2015, according to new data from eMarketer.
“Baidu is reaping the benefits of Google’s ban in China—and of course, a massive and growing internet user population,” says eMarketer in the report, which breaks out search ad revenues from the overall digital advertising market for the first time.
The research firm notes that China will account for $14.90 billion, or 32.8 percent, of the global search spend in 2015. The U.S., by comparison, will account for $25.66 billion in ad spend this year. But, with rapid growth search growth of 32.8 percent this year — nearly double the overall growth of 16.2 percent — it’s easy to see that China could soon eclipse U.S. search spend. Spend that Google is missing out on.
For another perspective on future growth, the U.S. has internet penetration of over 86 percent of the population, while in China, just 46 percent has internet access according to Internet Live Stats.
Google’s search ad share is expected to shrink marginally from 55.2 percent in 2013 to 54.5 percent in 2015. Google’s search ad revenues will continue to far outweigh its competitors this year. The company is expected to bring in $38.42 billion in search revenues in 2014 and $4446 billion in 2015. Baidu’s revenue is expected to grow from $5.35 in 2014 to $7.18 in 2015.
Microsoft and Yahoo will see their combined search share grow by just 6.5 percent in 2015. Bing saw strong growth in 2014, with its search ad share rising from 3.7 percent in 2013 to 4.2 percent in 2014. Bing’s share is expected to hold steady in 2015. Yahoo is expected to see stronger revenue growth in 2015, rising to $1.90 billion from $1.78 billion in 2014. However, Yahoo’s global share will continue to shrink from 2.5 percent in 2014 to 2.3 percent in 2015. Last week, the two companies have extended talks to renegotiate their search deal which hit its five year mark in March.
Search is expected to make up $81.59 billion globally, up 16.2 percent from 2014. Search is expected to grow at nearly 10 percent a year through 2019 to top $130.58 billion globally.
Google’s investment in artificial intelligence does more than just create better search results; it allows Google’s engineers to make constant algorithm changes right under our noses. Columnist Nate Dame explains.
Has anyone else noticed that we’ve been seeing fewer algorithm update announcements from Google in recent years? That Google’s PR campaigns about changing search results has been quieting down?
If you have, rest assured: you’re not crazy.
I scrolled through Moz’s Google Algorithm Change History recently and graphed the number of changes by year (an imperfect study, probably, but a pretty good general standard)
This begs the question: How many changes do go unnoticed? Are we catching them all? Is Google’s future in AI learning machines that can make quiet, invisible updates day in and day out?
Google Is Investing Heavily in AI
It’s no secret that Google has a lot of skin in the game when it comes to artificial intelligence. Google has been slowly collecting researchers and developers, scattering the purchase of various departments over continents and years… probably in hopes that no one would notice. Oh, we noticed.
March 2013: Google acquires DNNresearch, a neural network startup out of the University of Toronto, and gets the team refocused on expanding traditional search algorithms.
January 2014: Google acquires DeepMind and sets up the artificial intelligence team to work directly with the Knowledge team on Google’s search algorithms. (They also, almost immediately, set up an AI ethics board – presumably, to save the human race from AI-wrought extinction.)
September 2014: Google expanded research surrounding quantum computing byhiring John Martinis and his research team out of UCSB.
October 2014: Google acqui-hires two teams of AI researchers from Oxford (and announces a partnership with the University) to “enable machines to better understand what users are saying to them.”
Google has put up a pretty penny to build a team of researchers that can push machines to the very edge of artificial intelligence.
Google Is Already Smarter Than We Realize
The new development may not impose dramatic changes on Google search right away, but not because it’s not applicable.
The truth is, soft AI is pretty much everywhere these days, and Google has been employing machine learning techniques since the Panda update (and probably further back still). Google’s own super-smart Knowledge Graph is friendly enough to inform us that machine learning is, in fact, a type of artificial intelligence.
Is it possible that the reason we have only seen one major update so far in 2015 (and an unnamed update at that) is that Google no longer needs to launch major algorithm changes? If its AI bots are busily making small, under-the-radar updates every minute of the day, Google might never have to launch (and therefore announce) another update ever again.
The Future Could Get Even Weirder
That the future of algorithm updates is up in the air is somewhat unsettling, but it may only be the beginning.
Google already curates its own medical information, in part to protect us from misinformation I’m sure. (Has anyone else noticed that medical keywords are some of the most expensive keywords AdWords has to offer?)
Next, it might be checking facts for us to determine rankings. No matter where you land on the political spectrum, there is a valid concern that this type of algo could stifle bold new voices in the scientific community.
It could make it more difficult for bright young people to bring about the next revolution in science. After all, most of today’s established science came about because someone challenged the herd mentality of yesterday.
What’s A Marketer to Do?
Will Google’s search algorithms soon be driven primarily, or completely, by artificially intelligent machines?
Even though Google’s tactics are changing, their endgame is not. That means the intersection of SEO and content marketing is still the sweet spot for marketers to focus on:
Identify specific, measurable attributes of high-quality content, and put them into practice. Google’s algorithm updates may be more like ninjas than Goliaths from here on out, but the goal is the same. Keep your eye (and your SEO) on the prize.
Think user intent, not just keywords. The later are still valuable, but only in the context of the former. Keep improving how you talk to your audience, not how you talk to search engines.
Google said a fix was rolling out and that the work was completed Sunday, March 29. See updates below.
There are widespread reports from Google AdWords users that their keyword quality scores have fallen significantly.
I’m seeing the same thing, with exact match brand keywords that previously had a quality score of 10 now are showing a quality score of 6.
From what I’m seeing, and others are reporting, some click prices may be affected, too, but it’s hard to say. Others I’ve spoken to haven’t seen any increases, so it’s unclear if it’s just a reporting bug or not at this point. Update: Google says it’s a reporting bug only. See below for official statement.
It’s not clear at this time how many accounts are affected. One advertiser posted on the forum that they had confirmation from an AdWords rep that it’s a widespread bug:
“Just spoken to someone at Google and this is a widespread issue/bug that has affected many accounts in the UK. Their engineers are looking into it but they couldn’t give a timeframe when it will be fixed.”
We have contacted Google for a comment and will update here when hear back.
Update 11:09 AM Eastern: A Google spokesperson issued this statement:
“We’re aware of a bug that is affecting quality score reporting and are actively working to fix this. Rest assured, the bug affects reporting only, not ad serving. We’re expecting it to be fixed in the next day.”
Update 11:23 AM Eastern: Google says a fix is already rolling out. A spokesperson has updated Search Engine Land:
“We’re aware of a bug that is affecting quality score reporting and are actively working to fix this. Rest assured, the bug affects reporting only, not ad serving. We’re currently rolling out fixes and expect all accounts to see normal reporting by tomorrow.”
