Industry News

Google Ads has released an update it the Google Ads API, version 17.1. Version 17.1 includes shareable ad previews, removing specified automatically created assets linked to Responsive Search Ads, retrieving offline conversion diagnostics, offline diagnostics report metrics, standard bidding strategies for video campaigns, and more.

Google is testing a new label for its search results snippets, this one is named "you may like." I am not sure how Google knows you may like this search result snippet, unless this is a variation of how Google names the "you visit often" label?

Google notified some advertisers last night that they are expected to receive $16 million dollars and $6 million dollars in credits. I am sure others got similar astronomical credit notices. Don't retire anytime soon, it is a bug, and Google will fix the amount if they have not done so already.

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today...

As part of the DOJ ruling that Google is a monopoly, the document noted that Apple has its own search index and the index size is of billions of websites. The specific number was redacted but it said, "Apple maintains an index of about X billion websites."

Google Business Profiles performance report is no longer showing the "call" tab that shows you statistics and data on searchers who called you from Google Search and Google Maps. I suspect this might be related to the Google Business Profile call history going away, as we reported earlier.

Google is testing yet another call extension ad format, this one shows the advertiser's name below the clickable phone number. This gives a lot more visibility to the phone number and the CTA for the call extension.

Google Ads will transition the functionality of Smart Campaign into Performance Max campaigns in the coming months. Google said "Performance Max provides all the same benefits of Smart campaigns and more," in an email sent to one advertiser.

Google Ads may be testing a new search ad format named "featured options." This shows ad listings in this thing card layouts that should be related to events.

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today...