The Travel Vertical

Weekly stories curated exclusively for digital tourism marketers

Madden Media: What Just Happened at “Google Marketing Live”

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Innovation is everything. The biggest Google event of the year for marketers, “Google Marketing Live,” took place in San Francisco in May. That’s when new Google products are presented.

Google Marketing Live

Two days of 21 on-stage Google presentations are neatly wrapped up here for you to grab a seat to pick and choose, as though you’d been in the room yourself. Click here to register for on-demand viewing of Google Marketing Live, from ad words to YouTube.

Madden Media at Google Marketing Live

Alternatively, take a short cut and check out this terrific key takeaway summary from Madden Media, a travel- and tourism-led marketing agency and a Google Partner.

Read more in their post, “New Google Products Set to Improve Destination Marketing.”

Claim Your Real Estate: A New Look for Google Search Has Icons

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Did you notice? Google has unveiled a visual refresh of the mobile search results page.

“The name of the website and its icon appear at the top of the results card to help anchor each result, so you can more easily scan the page of results and decide what to explore next,” explains Google.

The display URL, which is crucial brand real estate, will move above the ad headline with publisher names and icons. Now being rolled out, the new look provides more prominent brand positioning. Read more from Google here (and spot Google’s blog post typo).

Related: Google Auto-Delete News, The Travel Vertical, 5/7/2019

Does your site have a favicon? Site owners can learn more about how to choose their preferred icon for organic listings here. See the new look on the right.

photo: “The Keyword,” a Google blog post


Digital Ad Revenues Soar, Will Google Move to Limit Cookies?

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U.S. digital ad revenue soared above $100 billion for the first time in 2018, reports the Interactive Advertising Bureau, achieving double-digit growth.

  • Desktop continues to dwindle
  • Search captures half of all revenue
  • Social media is soaring
  • Video spiked

Get the highlights from AdAge here.

Meanwhile, “the cookie crumbles” as “potential headwinds include browsers adopting cookie-less solutions and imminent U.S. privacy regulations that might bring such fantastic growth into the single digits.”

On May 6, the Wall Street Journal (paywall) reported that Google, which handles 90% of the world’s searches, may block tracker cookies for third-parties other than Google Chrome (Chrome has a 63% market share globally and a 50% share in the U.S.). All eyes are on this week’s developer conference, so we’ll be following the story. Read more here.

Related: Question Mark? Zuckerberg Says Facebook is Pivoting to Privacy

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Talk to Me: Alexa Doesn’t Get It; Expedia Launches Action for Google Assistant

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#eTS18
Video screen shot during TKO for A.I. at #eTS18

Alexa doesn’t get it but Google put in a reasonable showing.

Were you there?

In a smackdown demonstration presented by Destination Analysts at eTourism Summit, the result was a technical knockout. The cloud-based, voice-activated robots competed in “A.I. Challenge: Amazon Alexa vs Google Assistant,” and it wasn’t even close, since Alexa failed to understand simple travel-related questions.

And there’s more. With the Expedia Action for the Google Assistant, travelers can now:

Expedia and Google

  • Browse and book hotels
  • Cancel flight and hotel reservations
  • Add a rental car to an existing round-trip flight reservation
  • Check available Expedia Rewards points
  • Access Expedia trip itineraries
  • Get packing lists for an upcoming trip

Get the details here.

6 SEO Experiments That Will Blow Your Mind: WordStream

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Did that title catch your attention? If so, it’s one of the:

According to Larry Kim, founder of WordStream and mega-SEO star, you should rewrite titles on your existing content. If your organic CTR is too low, write more enticing headlines to get people to click like mad. That’s one of the six proven ideas for improved discoverability and engagement in this content marketing article.

It will take nine minutes to read Larry’s column…and it will take much longer to implement…but it’s a great resource for cherry picking ideas from a hall-of-fame SEO strategist. (Remember, Larry sold his company for $130 million cash in May, so this is valuable advice!)

Read more here.

 

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Laurie Jo Miller Farr, Editor
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