This day in search marketing history: March 7
Landing page load time added to Google Quality Score, plus: Broad Core Algorithm Updates, bogus Domain Authority pitches, and more.
Google adds landing page load time to Quality Score
In 2008, Google AdWords confirmed a new addition to Quality Score: landing page load time.
Google said they did this for two reasons:
First, users have the best experience when they don’t have to wait a long time for landing pages to load. Interstitial pages, multiple redirects, excessively slow servers, and other things that can increase load times only keep users from getting what they want: information about your business. Second, users are more likely to abandon landing pages that load slowly, which can hurt your conversion rate.
– Inside AdWords, Landing page load time will soon be incorporated into Quality Score
And what did Google consider to be too slow? Google was typically vague, telling Search Engine Land:
- “Our goal is to encourage advertisers with landing pages that are excessively slow to speed up their sites. It’s not possible to provide an exact number of seconds above which we would consider a site to load ‘slowly,’ since we adjust for regional and country differences in average load times.”
Read all about it in Load Time Confirmed As AdWords Quality Score & New Category Exclusion Feature.
Also on this day
Google Broad Core Algorithm Updates: Everything you need to know
2022: What is a broad core algorithm update? Learn the complete history of Google’s core updates, what they are, and what’s important for SEO.
Google’s ‘Russian invasion of Ukraine’ results includes new search features
2022: The new features included sections for background information, estimated casualties and photos of the conflict.
Microsoft Advertising announces new ad type for service providers
2022: Professional service ads could also be used to promote regional offices, branches or even national brands that provide relevant services.
SEOs beware: Link builders are back with bogus Domain Authority pitches
2019: In dozens of emails and countless social media posts, SEOs expressed concerns over DA score changes and the impact on their Google rankings.
Google AMP team launches ‘Render on Idle’ to load ads faster when browsers sit idle
2018: The feature worked automatically with DoubleClick AMP ad tag and for ad networks using Fast Fetch.
AMP rolling out to 1 billion more people in Asia
2017: Baidu, Sogou and Yahoo Japan were adopting the mobile framework.
Flickr’s new ‘similarity search’ feature makes it easier to find visually similar photos
2017: Flickr said its new search option used advanced technology to surface similar photos without much work on the user’s end.
Google tests clickable phone numbers in organic search results
2016: Google was experimenting with click-to-call on the organic side, which they had done with ads and local before.
App marketers can now upload customer IDs to AdWords for targeting on Google Display Network
2016: The new bulk IDFA/advertising ID upload feature helped developers try to re-engage users on iOS and Android devices.
AdWords API For New Google Shopping Campaigns Now Available
2014: The API was available to agencies and third-party platforms to facilitate large-scale implementations.
Google Stepping Up Merchant Feed Enforcement
2014: Google would begin to disapprove products with incorrect GTIN, MPN and brand identifiers and globally demote products with incorrect identifier_exists attribute
Search In Pics: Bing Street View Car, Google Toy Helicopter & Special Key
2014: The latest images showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more.
Did Google Just Penalize Another Link Network? SAPE Links
2013: Webmasters who had used the SAPE link network reported that their sites took hard penalties within Google, resulting in a huge downgrade in ranking.
Blind Study Finds YP Local Results Beat Google, Bing, Yahoo
2013: Thousands of queries were compared over a year.
Google Maps Might Be Banned In Germany Over Patent Infringement
2013: The judge reportedly called the patent, which describes how map data and local search results can be combined, a “big idea.”
Facebook Updates News Feed, No Impact On Graph Search (Today)
2013: Though some of the News Feed changes could eventually have impacted Graph Search.
Google Meets Miss Manners, Encourages Searchers To Thank Those Who +1’d Content
2012: If a searcher did choose to thank someone for the +1, they were prompted to thank directly on Google+.
Microsoft adCenter Launches Location Extensions In Ads
2012: Location Extensions allowed local business advertisers to display their addresses and phone numbers within the ads on Bing and Yahoo.
Google To Acquire BeatThatQuote.com
2011: BeatThatQuote.com was a price comparison website for loans and financial products.
Google Controls 97 Percent Of Mobile Paid Search: Report
2011: The report also stated that mobile searches had a CTR that was 30% lower than desktop CTR.
Report: Expect More Aggressive Acquisitions From Google
2011: Having made a record 48 purchases in 2010, Google was “going to continue to be aggressive.”
Google Navigation Now Avoids Traffic
2011: Real-time traffic conditions and historical traffic patterns were factored into the routing.
Bing Tests New Top Bar Navigation & HTML5 Preview Coming Soon
2011: The new bar was larger, incorporating more of the Bing home page theme from that day.
First Angry Birds Product Integration To Tout Bing
2011: Rovio and Microsoft struck a deal to integrate Bing search into the game.
Google Tests More TV Ads With AdWords Integration
2008: Google sent out more invitations for advertisers to test out TV ads within the Google AdWords system.
U.S. Pentagon Bans Google From Military Bases
2008: The ban came after StreetView photographs of Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio were found on Google Maps.
Microsoft’s Google Obsession, MicroHoo’s Asian Outlook, And Competing For Digg
2008: “So it may be my last breath at Microsoft, but we’re going to be there, working away, building share.”
Utah Neuters Search Ad Trademark Keyword Law
2008: In short, you could now legally bid on trademarked terms in Utah, assuming you complied with the search engine’s trademark policy in your country.
Friendster Partners With Google & Drops Yahoo
2007: Social networking site Friendster selected Google to power search and ads on its site.
Link Count Updates At Google & Yahoo Search
2007: Yahoo and Google were updating the number of links they account for each site.
Version 5 Of Google Desktop Released
2007: Improvements to desktop search included the addition of “preview search results.”
Send Destination Points From Google Maps To Your GPS Device
2007: BMW in Germany started supporting integration with Google Maps.
YouTube Blocked In Turkey
2007: Because a video was found that insulted Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey.
Ask.com’s CEO, Jim Lanzone, Calls Yahoo Paid Inclusion “Hypocritical”
2007: He found it “hypocritical to charge for something we need to do anyway” (i.e., crawl the web to find quality pages to present to the searcher).
Yahoo China Sued For Linking To Unlicensed Music
2007: The case was filed in early January by “11 companies and seeks damages of 5.5 million yuan ($710,686).”
SuperPages Upgrades Mapping With Virtual Earth
2007: It added a range of sharing and personalization features built on top of the Microsoft Virtual Earth platform.
From Search Marketing Expo (SMX)
Past contributions from Search Engine Land’s Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)
These columns are a snapshot in time and have not been updated since publishing, unless noted. Opinions expressed in these articles are those of the author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.
- 2022: Geotargeting optimization: How region impacts your PPC results by Jason Tabeling
- 2019: The future of search engine marketing is full funnel by Josh Dreller
- 2018: The ultimate guide to bot herding and spider wrangling by Stephan Spencer
- 2017: Why you need to get back to SEO basics by Ryan Shelley
- 2017: 3 free AdWords testing tools to adopt today by Todd Saunders
- 2016: What different consumer groups really want from local business websites by Myles Anderson
- 2014: 4 Surprising SEM Stats Every E-Commerce Marketer Should Know by Jordan Elkind
- 2013: Enhanced Campaigns: The Future Is Now by George Michie
- 2013: The Search Engine We REALLY Want To See Google (Or Microsoft) Build by Nathan Safran
- 2012: 4 Proven Methods For Improving B2B Ad Targeting by Jessie Thomas
- 2012: How To Design Your Website For Dollars, Not Your Ego by Brian Massey
- 2012: UGC + Search Collide: Jesus, Jelly & Susan G. Komen by Conrad Saam
- 2012: How To Use Search Retargeting Data For Site Retargeting by Aaron Doades
- 2011: Is It Time To Rethink Bidding On Trademarks? by Matt Van Wagner
- 2011: Improving Local Search Marketing With Dynamic Content by Stephanie Hobbs
- 2011: The Importance Of Differentiated Content by Eric Enge
- 2011: Why Mobile Friendly Is Not Mobile SEO by Bryson Meunier
- 2008: Human Hardware: Working Memory by Gord Hotchkiss
- 2007: Reducing Barriers To Online Registration by Patricia Hursh
< March 6 | Search Marketing History | March 8 >
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About the author
Goodwin has been editing and writing about the latest developments and trends in search and digital marketing since 2007. He previously was Executive Editor of Search Engine Journal (from 2017 to 2022), managing editor of Momentology (from 2014-2016) and editor of Search Engine Watch (from 2007 to 2014). He has spoken at many major search conferences and virtual events, and has been sourced for his expertise by a wide range of publications and podcasts.