Search Console Introduces Regex Filters & More Digital Marketing News

Hosts Jess Budde, Greg Finn, and Christine “Shep” Zirnheld are back with another episode of Marketing O’Clock.

They’re here to tell you about better data filtering coming to Search Console, new Microsoft Advertising features, and the adversarial relationship between search engine algorithms and SEO.

If you’re unable to listen on Spotify, catch this week’s episode on your favorite podcast player or on YouTube.

New Filtering in Google Search Console

Gone are the days of filtering URLs and queries by one string at a time. In addition to the “contains”, “does not contain”, and “exactly matching” filters, you’ll now be able to apply a regular expression, too.

Google also announced a new and improved ‘compare mode” in Search Console, making it easier to compare multiple metrics at the same time.

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New Features in Microsoft Advertising

The latest rollout includes countdown customizers for responsive search ads, a UET tag helper browser extension, Google Ads data import for the API, new in-market audiences, and more!

Microsoft Advertising will also soon support customer match targeting for email addresses collected as first-party data along with flyer ad extensions.

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Content Optimization: Is It You or the Algorithm?

We’re breaking down a discussion in the digital marketing community regarding the complex relationship between search and social optimization strategies and the platform algorithms that influence them.

It’s kind of like platforms saying “we will reward this behavior until you adapt your business and get too good at it, and then we will punish it.” That’s the unavoidable cycle with spam or SEO. For news orgs, it has been awful. 18/

— Daphne Keller (@daphnehk) April 1, 2021

Take of the Week

William Harris shares an example of why leaving optimization solely in the hands of AI is a dangerous game.

Ecommerce owners: I basically just let the ads platform algorithm do all the optimization – A.I. is incredible!

Platform A.I.: Cool, thanks bro. You mind if I automatically create a search ad that appends “Shopify Website” to the title? That’ll really convert!#ppcchat pic.twitter.com/gBc3W7cQ3J

— William Harris (@wmharris101) April 2, 2021

ICYMI

ICYMI, Facebook Ads isn’t what it used to be. If you’re struggling to explain performance shifts to your clients, Andrew Foxwell is sharing a letter he penned to help get you started.

Lightning Round

We’ll answer your burning digital marketing questions during our lightning round segment.

• Who could be a part of Google’s FLoC origin trial?
• What lead to Facebook exposing millions of users’ data online?
• When are new Merchant Center specifications going into effect?
• Where might you start to see ads for streaming services?
• Why might you start getting more texts from brands?
• How is TikTok improving the accessibility of their app?

If you enjoyed the show, head over to the Marketing O’Clock site to subscribe to the show and our newsletter for all the news!

Image credits: All screenshots by author, April 2021