Learn With Google - Tuesday January 29, 2013

Am Here - This is what is Going on

[martinibuster]

Checked into the Manhattan offices in the meatpacking district. Waited in three lines. Promised breakfast so I hadn't eaten any but the "spread" was limited to sweets, coffee and rock hard mini-bagels... What!? No espresso? :P

Waiting for the thing to start.

[martinibuster]

Find new users. Suggested using Google +.
Over a billion searches per day
Win moments that matter by engaging billions of people in the right context, with personalized experiences they love

Google wants publishers to grow their business faster.

[martinibuster]

Be relevant - Understand traffic sources and technology used to access your site.

Be found - Make your site Google Search Friendly

Be engaging - What do site visitors want? Improving user experience.

Be accountable - analytics, user behavior metrics are important

[HuskyPup]

Google wants publishers to grow their business faster.

Just so they can smash them down even faster? Standing still is hard enough as it is!

[martinibuster]

User experience -

content
visual design
usability
functionality
customer support
user context
info architecture

1. Focus on user's goals
Mine analytics for understanding site visitors
Check keywords people use to access site. A participant raises hand and complains that Google is hiding this data. Googler suggests opting into the Webmaster Tool ecosystem.

[martinibuster]

Make sure your top exit pages are monetized

Gather user feedback to figure out what's working

[martinibuster]

2. Employ a clear structure to guide the user
- Contrast - use color saturation, and opacity to highlight page elements for information prioritization/hierarchy.

- Size - for drawing user attention to most important info on page

- Alignment - use a common axis to make elements appear related.

- Whitespace - draw attention to specific elements by leaving empty space around them.

- Grid - Create a sense of structure, order info with a simple grid

[martinibuster]

3. Ensure that users know what actions to take
- Simplify
Don't clutter page with too many actions
priitize preferred user actions in your design
Create a flowing hierarchy
Easy site navigation

- Navigation
Organize content from general to specific

- Search
Provide users with a search box
Consistent placement across site


- Consistency
Have visible call to actions
Maintain site theme with consistent use of colors, fonts and themes

[martinibuster]

4. Tailor your site experience to your site visitors
- build for mobile
Remove veatures that are not core to the mobile experience
Enlarge interface elements
Fast loading site

Howtogomo.com

[martinibuster]

5. Turn casual visitors into loyal users
- Related content - keep users moving through your site by promoting related articles or products

- What's new, What's Popular
. Highlight your most popular content
. Promote activity on the site, comments, active users, etc.
constantly provide fresh content and and showcase that content on top pages

Social Interaction
Make it easy for users to share and interact with you on favorite social networks

Email
Make it easy to subscribe for email updates, newsletters, or feeds.
. Track incrased engagement
. Several participants recommend Mail Chimp

Surpise and Delight
Set yourself apart from other sites
Distinctive, unique elements

Test, test, test - Get it right before going live
Multivarate testing is more comprehensive
a/b testing is easier
Recommends Google Analytics and Optimizely

[scooterdude]

Related content - keep users moving through your site by promoting related articles or products

Some folk think this leads to severe Google penalties for some sites, perhaps you could get clarification

[martinibuster]

Yeah, there was some discussion about that. Basically, bounce rate from site back to SERPs is bad. Drill down is good. Bounce from home page is an indication of something that needs improvement. Bounce from granular pages is normal.

[martinibuster]

DFP for small business

http://www.google.com/dfp/sb [google.com...]

More complicated than regular adsense. But allows you to show house ads and ads from outside networks etc. in addition to regular adsense

Allows adsense to compete against other networks for ad space

Slightly slower ad serving than regular adsense

- ad unit
defines size of ad unit and location

- Order - describes the negotiated deal

- Line Item
Defines the campaign you're running

Setting up dynamic allocation
Steps:
Create a new ad unit
Fill in the required information
Generate the ad tags

More info at google.oom/dfp/sbacademy

[jpch]

How was lunch?

[SevenCubed]

@martinibuster

Have you been to one of these before, or something similar hosted by google? Can you take their pulse? Does there appear to be as much enthusiasm by people in attendance?

[martinibuster]

Lunch couldn't come fast enough, lol. Just got back from Starbucks for a shot of espresso. Caffeine headache ebbing.

There are all kinds of people here. Yes, lots of enthusiasm but also a couple skeptics here and there voicing doubts on certain points. Googlers doing a good job of answering questions as well as passing on an answer when it's outside of their expertise (particularly when it comes to search related questions).

Mobile is on a lot of minds.

[martinibuster]

Go mobile and Go Social.

Mobile users will surpass desktop users by 2015.

Run a performance report in AdSense and choose the Platforms option to see devices visitors use to access your site.

Building a mobile site is not just porting existing site to a mobile version. Mobile users have specific needs.

Desktop opimizations work for mobile. Try different ad sizes, ad positioning, etc.

Mobile best practices

Google has a mobile crawler specific for mobile optimized sites. Limit the Google crawler to the mobile only bot to help avoid duplicate content issues. There are two algorithms, with one focused on delivering mobile optimized sites.

Google is working on an adaptive code.

[martinibuster]

Zoned out during the Google Social segment. Speaker said website engagement increases when you use Google+. Encouraged publishers to use Google Hangouts to interact with site visitors by creating events with it.

I spoke with the Mobile Googler and she said an adaptive ad unit is something they're talking about doing. She also pointed out Forbes.com's implementation of mobile ads that changes according to whether the mobile device is displaying the site in landscape or portrait mode. The ad bounces around from top of page to in content, depending how the site is displayed by the mobile device.

[netmeg]

I spoke with the Mobile Googler and she said an adaptive ad unit is something they're talking about doing. She also pointed out Forbes.com's implementation of mobile ads that changes according to whether the mobile device is displaying the site in landscape or portrait mode. The ad bounces around from top of page to in content, depending how the site is displayed by the mobile device.

Good to know. They oughta come talk to me.

[martinibuster]

Product manager speaking. Claims many publishers aren't aware of how much of their media consumption is done on mobile devices like tablets and smart phones. It's already a multi-device world and getting bigger. Adapting to this is one of Google's focuses this year.

On AdSense side

Admob is for mobile devices. Otherwise use AdSense for mobile ads. Speaker encourages publishers to review how much of income is from mobile. One of Google's goals is to help publishers dial up that kind of monetization.

[netmeg]

Well over half my traffic is mobile; over millions of impressions, I just wish Google could adapt as quickly as I can.

[martinibuster]

Pledged to work better with trusted longtime publishers, referred to blog post from late 2012.

[martinibuster]

Retargeting pays a premium because advertisers are willing to pay more to reach specific kinds of consumers.

[netmeg]

I have to admit, I've seen a little of this.

[martinibuster]

Publisher suggested that knowing what categories of ads are being clicked would be helpful toward understanding what kind of content to build. Product manager promised to bring that up for discussion inside Google.

[martinibuster]

Audience member recounted having adsense turned off and that communication was vague. Said he made various changes but to this day doesn't know what change fixed the issue and is afraid to undo any of them. Manager apologized because Google doesn't like for people to be afraid. But also explained that lack of transparency is partly to head off scammers who are on the lookout for loopholes to exploit. Manager hooked up the publisher to speak with the enforcement policy Googlers to discuss how they could improve.

Most publishers in room expressed desire to be able to PAY for customer support should their account get suspended.

[martinibuster]

Product manager said the mobile situation is that users got ahead of businesses.

[martinibuster]

Programmatic buying is one of the big recent trends. Google certified ad network is working on bringing in more mobile ad buyers.

[martinibuster]

Product manager asked for a show of hands of how many publishers have had their account suspened and was surprised at how many publishers raised their hands. He thought it was a vaninshingly small chance to happen to a publisher. Startled at how many in the room had been suspended and reinstated at some point.

[martinibuster]

Publishers express dismay about User Generated Content possibly triggering a suspension. Manager has no solution for not showing ads on a page that might violate policy.

Personally, I think that's a site issue, not a Google issue. An issue of moderation, imo.