We’re staying abreast of the goings on in the industry, keeping an eye on what’s next, and trying out the newest tools and tech. Here’s a list of news you can use for March.
Table of Contents
Analytics Updates
Don’t let google create a GA4 property for you!
you’ll miss an opportunity to re-assess conversions & ensure some of your most-used features in universal are also set up in GA4.
You may have seen this message if you’ve logged in to Google Analytics recently, or you may have received an email saying the same thing. Google is starting to automatically create GA4 properties on behalf of people who have Universal Google Analytics properties.
Instead, we recommend that you think through the events you want to track on your site and take this as an opportunity to review the interactions that should count as conversions. We’ve been helping dozens of organizations set up and learn about GA4, and we’d be happy to talk through options with you.
A few resources:
- Analyticsmania video explaining the downsides of automatically created properties. Julius Fedorovicius of Analytics mania is one of our favorite authorities on GA4, in addition to our own Nico Brooks.
- Google article on automatically created properties — includes a ‘how to opt out’ link.
Looker Studio GA4 API quota issues
“Quota Error” errors in dashboards can break tables & charts entirely. We have some workarounds.
Many people have been seeing quota errors in Looker Studio dashboards when connecting to GA4 as a data source. This is because Google introduced stringent GA4 API limits in November. Unfortunately, this error results in charts and tables breaking entirely.
If you have a dashboard that connects to GA4, it’s very possible that users of your dashboard have encountered this problem. The threshold we’ve seen causing the most problems is the ‘10 queries per second’ limit. If we manage your dashboard, we can fix this on your behalf; if you maintain your own dashboards, here are a few tips:
- Keep the number of GA4 widgets, tables, and graphs on a page to fewer than 10. This often does the trick.
- If that isn’t ideal, use the Extract Data connector to cache GA4 data. With the Extract Data connector, Looker Studio grabs and stores data from a source instead of connecting to the source in real time when a person is viewing the dashboard. You can schedule the Extract Data connector to pull data once per day. There are some gotchas with using Extract Data, so let us know if you need some help.
- If you have advanced needs, we can help you set up the GA4 BigQuery connection and pull data from BigQuery instead. There are a lot of benefits to this in addition to overcoming API limits, but it also adds complexity.
We also recommend you read Measurelab’s article, GA4’s Data API quotas are breaking Looker Studio reports, which summarizes the problem and offers various solutions.
SEO Updates
Using ChatGPT for Schema (and more)
There are tons of useful and creative applications for the new AI chatbot.
ChatGPT is an AI language model developed by OpenAI. The AI chatbot responds to queries the user inputs with human-like responses to best address the topic. There is a myriad of applications for this technology, but one way it can help improve your site’s SEO performance is by utilizing ChatGPT for schema templates.
Schema markup helps add contextual information on web pages, sometimes resulting in rich snippets appearing in the search results. Schema.org has hundreds of documents on different schema types available for users, some of which include templates.
ChatGPT can access information from sites like schema.org to provide you with a schema template that can be used to enhance your web page’s contextual information. This can help accelerate writing schema when you’re searching for a quick template to use. It’s been tested for various schema types, including:
- Article Schema
- Product Schema
- FAQ Schema
- Product Schema
- Real Estate Schema
- Restaurant Schema
- And more!
If you’re looking for a quick way to develop a schema template for a webpage but are having a difficult time finding an existing template, utilize ChatGPT.
We’re also seeing a lot of interesting ways ChatGPT is being used to help with digital marketing tactics. Here are some examples:
- How to use ChatGPT to improve your creative process
- 25 ChatGPT Examples For Digital Marketers & SEOs
- How to use ChatGPT for keyword research (with actual prompts)
Google rolling out the February 2023 product reviews update
The update aims to promote reviews that are “above and beyond” the templated information typically found on the web.
Google began rolling out the February 2023 Product Reviews update on February 21, 2023. This update awards webpages with high-quality product review information.
Follow Google’s recommendations for writing product reviews to help ensure high rankings for your content pieces. Google’s guidance on how to write quality product reviews includes details that you may be able to suggest as you encourage product reviews for your products. Details can be found in Google’s Product Review Guidelines.
Paid Media Updates
Google adding more levers for Performance Max Campaigns
Advertisers can now add account-level negative keywords.
This Performance Max update gives them more control over impressions in these campaigns. Google is allowing brand exclusions on these campaigns, so it won’t interfere with brand campaigns.
It was previously difficult to add exclusions to Performance Max campaigns — the brand exclusion will help marketers continue to bid on brands in a search campaign and control how they want to appear for those queries.
The new feature for adding URLs for AI learning will most likely set DSA campaigns and ad groups redundant and will eventually be sunset.
Studies show Google Ads CPC & CPL increases across all industries
More than ever, maintaining strong KPIs relies on a multi-channel approach and re-emphasizes the value of remarketing ads.
Videnglobe states that in 2023, Google Ads costs are predicted to increase by 20%-30% compared to a 5%-19% rise in 2022. What’s more, WordStream reports that Google Ads cost per lead (CPL) has increased for 91% of industries YoY, and Insider Intelligence points out that conversion rates fell in 21 of 23 industries, with a typical overall decline of 14%—a greater decline than last year’s, but relatively in line with 2019’s 12% decline.
It’s likely that inflation is influencing higher CPCs and CPLs. Since CTRs are stable across the board, intent likely hasn’t dropped — but getting in front of users has gotten more expensive.
If inflation is to blame, marketers need to double down on multi-channel marketing with an increased focus on remarketing because it will require more touchpoints to get in front of users. This could also impact ROAS and other KPIs.
Microsoft Advertising announces PrestaShop partnership
PrestaShop is the leading open-source e-commerce platform in Europe and Latin America.
Through this partnership, over 300,000 PrestaShop merchants can now easily reach millions of new high-value customers using the Microsoft Ads and Listings module in the PrestaShop Official Addons Marketplace.
The onboarding is simple, allowing merchants to connect with shopping offerings that display their products using free and paid listings.
>Microsoft has been working on gaining more impression share in the digital auction place. This could allow us to think of more tests for ecommerce brands that are outside of Google and Social.
With CPCs going up in Google, Microsoft is working on becoming more competitive with features such as ChaptGPT and now building larger partnerships.
LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms to be prefilled with work email address
The change should improve the quality of leads generated.
LinkedIn is working on improving its lead gen efforts since the platform is so expensive for advertisers. By ensuring that the auto-filled email on Lead Gen forms is a work email, there will be fewer “dead leads” that go to personal inboxes where further contact becomes increasingly more difficult.
Other benefits include improved submission rates compared to custom questions without a work email prefill and clearer insights into work email-specific metrics such as number of leads, cost per lead, and submission rate.
