It feels like a massive understatement to say that October 2021 was a huge month in the world of digital marketing. In fact, the news we’re sharing in this roundup is big enough to warrant such hyperbole, but then there’s … Meta. There’s a lot to unpack regarding Facebook's company name change, so we’ll just let CEO Mark Zuckerberg handle that himself in this Verge interview. As for this roundup, we have big stories from Google (as always), Facebook (err, Meta?), and our team here at Ayima.
Continue reading to learn all about these stories, and more, in our October 2021 digital roundup.
SEO stories
Google’s mobile search now has continuous scrolling
Google’s improvements to mobile search continue with the newly added continuous scrolling feature. You may remember that the company launched a mobile search redesign in January 2021, and this addition only makes mobile search better and more intuitive for users. For those unaware, continuous scrolling means that when you reach the bottom of the search results, the page will automatically deliver the next batch of results. That’s right, no more button clicks to simply see more results.
Google Search Analytics API gets an upgrade
Thank the search gods, because Google Search Analytics now has the ability to pull data from Google News and Discover, as well as support for Regex. As Matt Southern at Search Engine Journal points out, these are some of the most requested additions from folks in the SEO industry, especially News and Discover. If you want to know more about this update and how to add these parameters yourself, check out Google’s announcement.
Paid media stories
New eCommerce features, integrations arrive in time for holidays
With the holiday season nearly upon us, some major eCommerce players are providing new features and integrations to improve performance measurement and guide users to the best possible deals. Here’s a quick look with some helpful links.
- Google improved its reporting capabilities, added a “deals” badge to the Shopping Tab, and integrated with Shopify and WooCommerce.
- Google also integrated with BigCommerce.
- Bing partnered with Shopify for complete integration.
Facebook continues to update ad performance and measurement tools
Facebook announced numerous updates last month as part of the company’s goal to improve performance and measurement for advertisers. Chief among them is the return of post-view conversions in the default measurement window for new campaigns. In the announcement post, the company’s VP of marketing stated that this will uphold the commitment to privacy and tracking preferences, while still providing advertisers with the info they need. You can learn more about this and other improvements at Facebook.
Digital analytics stories
Google Analytics 4 adds notable new features
Google Analytics 4 keeps getting better thanks to some handy new features added by the search giant. Two of the biggest additions are the improvements made to the machine learning-based attribution and the integration of Search Console. The latter feature is the biggest of them all, because you can now easily access Search insights and really dig into SEO performance metrics. Google did make other changes, and you can learn more about them at the Analytics blog.
New Google Analytics 360 rolls out to enterprise customers
With the launch of the new Google Analytics 360, the platform is now better equipped to handle the needs of big organisations with teams working in different countries. Google increased the number of custom dimensions and introduced user roles, which allows for great collaboration when sharing user segments to specific groups. The search giant also improved the intra-day reporting, making this an all-around win for marketers. Get the full rundown at Google.
Ayima news
We wanted to take a moment to remind you about the launch of Ayima Insights Club. You can learn more about Insights Club and sign up today to get free, personalised news and tools tailored to your specific interests.
Wear It Pink Day!
We want to showcase the awesome work of our Breast Cancer Now team. They celebrated Wear It Pink Day this past month, and you can learn more about this great cause and donate at the Wear It Pink website.
The new Ayima Pulse
We also launched a new version of Ayima Pulse, our free SEO trends and market research tool. It’s now more powerful than ever, as it allows you to view data from further back, group by host/domain, and sort by winners and losers. Check it out for free at the Ayima Pulse page.
Upcoming speaking engagements
Some of our Ayima colleagues received invites this month to speak at several industry conferences in the new year. You can catch them as far afield as Brighton and Texas.
- Lucy Whittaker (Head of Paid) will speak at PPC Hero’s Hero Conf in Austin, Texas in February 2022.
- Paola Didonè (Senior SEO Consultant) and Rich Ingilby (Client Growth Manager) will both speak at brightonSEO in April 2022.
Blog articles
Here’s what we published in October 2021.
- Getting the most out of Responsive Search Ads: Client Growth Manager Richard Ingilby fully explores Responsive Search Ads, explains how to use them, and provides a helpful RSA template.
