🔍 Google's display ad business under scrutiny

Plus, TripAdvisor’s tool for managing reviews across platforms. Feb 06, 2020 Good morning search marketers, will Google sell off its DoubleClick tech? The Justice Department is focusing on Google Ad Manager in its probe into [whether Google has too much control]( “over the monetization of digital content,” according to a WSJ report. Ad Manager encompasses the ad server and ad exchange that were formerly under the DoubleClick brand. The article said Google executives have discussed selling the technology, though a company spokesperson said it’s not a consideration. Google’s ability to dominate the display ad market with its acquisition of DoubleClick in 2007 has rankled many media buyers and sellers alike. Google counters that having a server and ad exchange under one roof makes things more efficient for everyone. Still, [Google’s focus on its Network business has waned]( in recent years. Ad revenue for that segment grew by just 8% year-over-year in 2019, compared to 17% growth for its own properties. Local reviews management is becoming a critical, and often cumbersome, aspect of customer service and digital marketing. To help streamline management and responding to reviews, TripAdvisor has launched a new tool that allows restaurateurs to [manage reviews across multiple vendors]( from one dashboard. Ginny Marvin, Editor-in-Chief Pro Tip Leverage the Apriori with BERT embeddings to find semantically related categories “One of the biggest challenges an SEO faces is one of focus. We have data coming out of our eyeballs, but we need to refine large data to something meaningful,” explains JR Oakes of Locomotive. “But we can mix the new with the old to create a tool that has value for something we do all the time — keyword grouping and change review. We can leverage a little known algorithm, called the Apriori Algorithm, along with BERT, to produce a useful workflow for understanding your organic visibility at thirty thousand feet.” [Learn more »]( Protect your keywords from ad hijacking Ad Hijacking can be very damaging to your paid search programs. It happens when an affiliate impersonates a brand by running ads that look identical to a brand’s ads by using similar headlines, descriptions, and display URL, to increase the odds that users will click on their ads instead of the brand’s. Read this white paper from BrandVerity to learn the most common indicators of ad hijacking and get tips on how to stop it. [Get it now »]( Search Shorts URLs, affiliate links and Googlebot. URL length. John Mueller from Google said [URL length is not a ranking factor](. rel=sponsored. [Definitely use rel=sponsored for affiliate links, if you can](, Google’s John Mueller said. Googlebot new name live. Martin Splitt from Google said the [new user agent name is 100% live](, but maybe [it isn’t](? Windows search outage. Windows’ [Bing-powered search went down]( for more than three hours yesterday morning. Search results appeared blank, The Verge first reported, before an apparent network disruption was fixed at 11:35AM ET. Score a free ticket to SMX! Become a Search Engine Land MVP, refer your friends, and you could win a cool MVP prize pack, including a Search Engine Land t-shirt, sweatshirt — even a FREE ticket to SMX! [Learn more »]( What we're reading We've curated our picks from across the web so you can retire your feed reader [Approaching SEO in a Queryless World]( – State of Digital [Conversions Increased +101% and +644% YoY When We Restructured Our Paid Campaigns]( – Seer Interactive [Glass Enterprise Edition 2 now available for developers]( – Google Developers Blog [Google Top Stories With Descriptions In Snippets]( – Search Engine Roundtable [How to Optimize for Google’s Position Zero]( – Portent [January 2020 Winners and Losers: Google Updates Shake the SEO Industry – Tyson Stockton]( – Searchmetrics [Meta Tags for SEO: A Simple Guide for Beginners]( – Ahrefs [Pay Attention to These SEO Trends in 2020 and Beyond]( – Moz [Position Zero Is Dead; Long Live Position Zero]( – Moz [Top marketers and the customer journey]( – Microsoft Advertising [Yoast SEO 13.0: Behind the scenes improvements]( – Yoast [Search Engine Land] [( [Want to advertise?]( This email was sent to {EMAIL}. [Unsubscribe]( [We respect your privacy.]( This email was sent by: Search Engine Land - a Third Door Media, Inc. publication with headquarters at 279 Newtown Tpke. Redding, CT 06896 USA © 2006-2019 Third Door Media. All Rights Reserved.