Let’s get things straight with the Google page experience update; Friday’s daily brief

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Good morning, Marketers, and let’s get some things straight about some recent confusion around Google Search.

We know Google has postponed the page experience update, but there has been a lot of misinformation out there around this update. Let me clarify the details:

• Core web vitals does not mean that this is a “core update.” The page experience update and Google core updates are very different updates. Please do not confuse the two. The “core” in both names is unrelated.
• Googlebot is not responsible for gathering your core web vital metrics. This data does not come from crawling, like many other Google Search signals do, but rather this data comes from real user field data from people using Chrome browsers to visit your website.
• It won’t be a drastic update. I expect this to rollout and most sites rankings in Google won’t budge.

There are a lot more tidbits and details around this page experience update, and we have a lot of content on this at our upcoming SMX Advanced show in June.

Barry Schwartz,
Google “core” explainer

Google showing local car inventory in search

Google seems to be testing a new feature to show local car and automobile inventory in its search results.

The search engine has a new landing page at /local/cars that lists local car inventory near you.  This seems to be pulling from dealership inventory websites and showcases the available cars, let’s you filter and narrow down your car search, and dive into specific cars that are for sale.

Google has not confirmed this feature, but it is accessible for all to see right now in the United States.

Read more here.

Google launches target ROAS bidding for app campaigns

“Starting today, if you have an Android app using Firebase SDK conversion reporting, you can use Target Return on Ad Spend (tROAS) bidding within App campaigns for installs,” wrote David Schachter, Product Manager for App Ads.

To get started with Target ROAS bidding for App campaigns:

• Create a new App campaign for Installs
• Select the “Bidding” section
• In the “What do you want to focus on?” dropdown, select “in-app action value”
• Input your desired target Return on Ad Spend percentage
  • It is highly recommended to use a target cost per action (tCPA) campaign before using a target Return on Ad Spend (tROAS) campaign to uncover what a feasible initial target ROAS can be for your app. 
• Launch your campaign

“When you set your target ROAS, you’re telling Google Ads the average value you want back for every dollar spent. Keep in mind that your budget will be used to get as much in-app value as possible at your set target ROAS,” Schachter said in the announcement.

Google products reviews update is done rolling out

The Google products reviews update started rolling out just over two weeks ago, and it is now done rolling out as of Thursday, April 22nd. The update had the biggest impact the first few days after it launched, between April 8th and April 10th.  But then there were numerous reports of additional algorithmic tremors after that three-day window.

We know this update was a big one for sites that were hit by it, and now is the time to see how big this really was for your product review sites.

Recent data from SEOs who are following this update closely show fluctuations and tremors for product review content sites as recently as Thursday morning. And Danny Sullivan from Google said recently that the update was still rolling out, but is done rolling out as of the time you get this email.

Read more here.

Google soft 404 ranking bug fixed?

A couple of weeks ago, there were reports of some sites having a nice number of their pages being labeled by Google as soft 404s. That means, Google was thinking a lot of real web pages on those sites were being labeled as not being pages Google should have in its index. Google did not exactly confirm the issue. We asked, and Google would not comment. But it seems like after a couple of weeks, Google did fix the issue on their end. 

These sites did not just notice a reporting issue in Google Search Console, but they actually noticed significant deindexing in Google Search and as a result. This led to less traffic from Google Search.

Again, Google would not comment but it now seems to be fixed. Google’s John Mueller did say on Twitter “when things affect so few pages/sites like here, we tend not to go into too much detail.”

Read more here.

Ad groups, site design and abbreviations.

Ad group level ROAS targets. With the rollout of the upcoming Google Ads target CPA and target ROAS bundle changes, Ginny Marvin from Google confirmed on Twitter that “ad group level ROAS targets for Maximize conversion value will be supported when a target ROAS is set.”

Change design may impact content changes. Google’s John Mueller said on Twitter, “If you change design, you generally change the content: headings, titles, images, internal linking, URL structure, accessibility, speed, etc – they’re all critical parts of a site and I’d consider them as content too.” Keep that in mind for your next website redesign.

Abbr tag. Using the abbreviation HTML tag, <abbr>, will not help you rank better in Google Search, said John Mueller of Google.

We’ve curated our picks from across the web so you can retire your feed reader.

• 10-step guide to podcast SEO – Vertical Leap
• Announcing new YouTube Select sponsorships – Google Blog
• Announcing v2 of the AdSense Management API – Google Ads Developer Blog
• Extracting Entities with Automated Data Wrappers – SEO By The Sea
• Long Tail SEO in 2021: How You Can Have It All or Die Trying – Moz