Google Ads News Roundup: June 2021

WooCommerce and Google Shopping Join Forces

WooCommerce, the popular e-commerce platform built on WordPress, is partnering with Google to make it easier for merchants to display their products across Google search properties at no cost. The Google/WooCommerce partnership follows on the Shopify integration announced in May. As Google continues to position itself as a platform for transactions, not just search, smaller merchants using platforms like WooCommerce and Shopify are being folded into Google’s Shopping Graph to expand their reach and Google’s offerings.

To ensure you’re capitalizing on this consolidation of product listings, reviews, and other aspects of the e-commerce ecosystem, check out these tips on providing better product information for shoppers, published on Google’s Search Central blog.

Related: In April 2021, Google updated its Product Reviews algorithm to reward high-quality product review content above thinner content. Search Engine Round Table covered the non-core update extensively.

Google June 2021 Core Update Rolls Out

The June 2021 Core Update concluded on June 12, after a relatively quick 10-day rollout. Most sites won’t notice the updates, but SEOs who manage a lot of sites will likely see changes in their Google search results that can’t otherwise be accounted for. Google has not confirmed specific changes, but did post an article on The Keyword with general information on how updates work. This excerpt from the article could be consolation to SEOs whose websites got hit:

There’s nothing wrong with pages that may perform less well in a core update. They haven’t violated our webmaster guidelines nor been subjected to manual or algorithmic action, as can happen to pages that do violate those guidelines. In fact, there’s nothing in a core update that targets specific pages or sites. Instead, the changes are about improving how our systems assess content overall. These changes may cause some pages that were previously under-rewarded to do better.

According to data complied by Amsive Digital, the biggest winners were reference sites like Wikipedia and product review sites, while TripAdvisor and sites that rely on user-generated content, like Quora and Yelp, saw decreases in traffic. These developments seem to be related to the recent confirmed update to the Product Reviews algorithm. Another core update is planned for July, which could potentially reverse any gains or losses caused by these unconfirmed updates.

Google Releases New Partner Badge for Partners Meeting 2022 Requirements

This month Google made Partner badges available to partner advertisers who met this year’s requirements. In order to receive the Google Ads stamp of approval, Partners must manage at least $10k in spend across accounts for 90 days and maintain optimization scores of over 70%. Another requirement is that half of the firm’s account strategists are certified in Google Ads. (Here at Gator SEM, we manage over $1M in annaul ad spend in a variety of industry verticals. 100% of our strategists are Google Ads certified.)

This year advertisers could meet the 70% optimization requirement without having accepted all of the algorithm’s recommendations to achieve that score, a change that was popular with digital strategists who like to take a more hands-on approach. Recommendations are based on performance history, campaign settings, and Google search volume and trends, but are not always relevant to all situations. As Google acknowledged, there is no substitute for individual advertisers’ knowledge of their clients. “Our partners know their clients better than we do. So we can make recommendations, but they can decide if it’s the right move,” a Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land.