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Digital Marketing Week in Review by Four Dots: November 2019, Week 1

November 6th, 2019

posted by Radomir Basta to Advertising, digital marketing, facebook, Google, SEO, twitter

Google Officially Launches Site Kit Plugin for WordPress After Six Months of Beta Testing

Google has released version 1.0 of its Site Kit WordPres plugin after six months of beta testing. The company says it drastically simplified the setup, fixed some bugs, and made the entire process much smoother.

Site Kit provides WordPress users with an opportunity to access data from Google products directly from their site’s dashboard. The plugin gathers data from Google Search Console, Google Analytics, PageSpeed Insights, and AdSense.

One of the best things about Site Kit is that users don’t have to edit any additional codes. This makes setting up products like Google Analytics much easier and simpler for the users who don’t have developer experience.

All users can install Site Kit, but Google states that this plugin is mostly designed for professionals who work on sites for clients.

Here are the most important benefits Site Kit plugin offers WordPress users:

It allows clients to easily access data from Google products by simply logging into the WordPress dashboard
Clients are able to see performance stats and improvement suggestions directly from Google
Site Kit allows users to set roles and permissions and make sure only relevant people have access to data

Google Is Now Allowing Anyone to Register a “.New” Domain to Create Custom Shortcuts

Google Registry has made the .new domain extension available to anyone for the purpose of creating custom shortcuts.

Google originally introduced the .new extension as a shortcut for its own services. So, for instance, users are able to create a new document or a spreadsheet by going to .doc or .sheets.

After this update, any company can register a .new domain to create this type of shortcuts for their own services and products. Here are a few examples:

Word.new – for creating a new document in Microsoft Word
Playlist.new – for creating a new Spotify playlist
Sell.new – for creating a new product listing on eBay
Link.new – for creating a new short link with Bitly

Google points out that all .new extensions will be served over HTTPS by default.

When it comes to registrations of .new domains, trademark owners will be the first in line. However, this will be for a limited time only – from December 2, 2019 to January 14, 2020.

After the limited registration period expires, all remaining .new domains will be available to anyone.

Google Introduces The Long-Awaited Page Speed Report in Search Console

At last, Google is launching the page speed report in Search Console that was officially previewed in May this year.

Considering that the report is now available for the public, let’s see what it looks like and how it can help site owners.

The page speed report gathers data from the Chrome User Experience Report and groups URLs into the categories – Fast, Moderate, and Slow.
This report also identifies the specific issues causing the page to work slower and groups pages with similar problems together, which allows users to easily find the slow pages.
Users can click on a certain identified issue which will take them to Google’s Page Speed Insights tool. There, users can learn more about how to optimize their pages and solve various issues.

Google Ads to Officially Roll out Lead Form Extensions

Lead Form Ad Extensions is a feature many have spotted being tested within recent weeks, and now Google officially announced that this new Google Ads trait will soon be rolling out. Assuming the testing of these lead capturing extensions went well, Google Ads users will soon be able to deploy this useful feature within their own campaigns.

According to the note from the creators:

“Lead form extensions capture interest when potential customers are searching for your company, products, or services on Google. A fast, mobile-optimized experience makes form submission easy and eliminates the extra step of navigating to your mobile site lead form.”

The company also noted that one particular advertiser reported a 20% increase in closing rate for sales leads once they started using the new lead form extensions.

More details on Google’s page: Connect with customers faster using lead form extensions (beta).

Three New Facebook Messenger Features to Help Brands Connect with Customers

The social media behemoth has recently launched 3 new Messenger features that should be of great help to businesses and brands alike, especially when it comes to using this platform for the purposes of customer communication.

The updates include:

Icebreakers for commonly asked questions
Click to Messenger ad update
More reply options for users

As the consumers’ demand for brand-customer communication via messaging platforms rises, these new Messenger features come as no surprise. Namely, 60% of users aged 18 to 24 stated they would like to be able to communicate with more businesses via instant messages, according to a recent Facebook study.

Twitter Will No Longer Accept Political Advertising

The social media giant cancels all advertising related to official political campaigns. Jack Dorsey of Twitter recently stated that his network will ban political advertising as it poses as a risky and challenging aspect of online advertising, and hinders productive discourse among people.

“Internet political ads present entirely new challenges to civic discourse: machine learning-based optimization of messaging and micro-targeting, unchecked misleading information, and deep fakes. All at increasing velocity, sophistication, and overwhelming scale,” said Dorsey.

He also called out Facebook for allowing political advertising and using false claims in their political ads.

We will be here next week with a fresh batch of new and exciting news from the digital marketing industry, but in the meantime check out our previous edition of Digital Marketing Week in Review by Four Dots!

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