Brussels is for the first time preparing to regulate how search engines such as Google operate, under draft proposals designed to bolster the rights of businesses and app makers that rely on big internet giants to sell their services. [Source: Financial Times]
Over the past several months, Google has been rolling out new features exclusively in the new AdWords interface, or “experience.” On Tuesday, the company announced some attention-grabbing new features aimed at improving productivity on the platform. [Source: Search Engine Land]
Facebook has announced a new option within their suite of AR tools, adding ‘target tracking’ to their AR Studio platform which will enable developers to build AR experiences triggered by image content. [Source: Social Media Today]
Businesses and publishers will welcome the new move by Google AMP team that has launched some new features recently. One such feature is the ‘Render on Idle’ feature. This will load ads faster and lead to higher ad impressions when the browser is in the idle mode. [Source: Logicserve Digital]
Google rolled out its click-to-message AdWords extension in October 2016. Similar to call extensions, message extensions allow users to message a business directly from the ad. Now the company is announcing formal reporting for messaging. It will be available in the next few weeks in the US, the UK, Canada, France, Brazil and Australia. Users of message extensions will need to turn on message reporting in account settings. [Source: Search Engine Land]
Google unveiled two features designed to improve direct-response advertising performance on YouTube — beyond e-commerce and Shopping ad formats. [Source: Marketing Land]
Google is now showing answers without any additional search results for some queries. For example, if you search for [time in los angeles] or [time in new zealand], Google will show the answer, then show a button below the answer to load the search results. [Source: Search Engine Land]
Looking to capitalize on its position as a key source for real-time updates on news and events, Twitter’s testing out a new breaking news module, which will highlight big news stories at the top of user timelines. [Source: Social Media Today]
Custom columns in AdWords can help marketers get more detailed insights into how their campaigns are performing based on non-standard metric targets. Now, advertisers can create and track custom metrics at the keyword and ad levels in addition to the campaign and ad group levels. [Source: Search Engine Land]
Google looks to be adding a feature in Google My Business that allows business owners to add descriptions that appear in the local panel in search results. [Source: Search Engine Land]
