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Breaking news stories are an
example of moments you
can’t afford to lose


Suppose you have a news site and a user visits your review of a restaurant as they walk through town. They may just want to know if you gave it two or four stars… or they may want to know your reviewer's in-depth thoughts and recommendations for each course. How you deliver this information will make a big difference. (And remember, they're impatient!) 

2)  Next up: try to understand customer needs in the moment. Put yourself in the consumer’s shoes for each moment you want to win. Ask yourself, “What would make this easier or faster? What content or features would be most helpful for this moment?” Again, ask yourself: Is your user looking for a quick moment or are they there for the long haul?

In a story or photo feature about fashion, for instance, you could add a widget showing locations of the stores that sell each dress or pair of shoes you feature, or video of the fashion shows where they were revealed.

3)  Third, make sure you use context to deliver the right experience. Contextual signals like location and time of day will help you deliver experiences and messages that feel tailor-made for the moment.

For example, if a soccer fan is having a micro-moment, they probably just want the top highlights and the final score from the match last night. This could be your spot for a social media update or a 30-second video. But if they're in a macro-moment, they'll want in-depth match analysis, team lineups and analysis of how the final score will affect the league. That's your moment for the long-form article or podcast.


What contextual signals can 
you gather from your users?


4)  Be sure to optimize across all aspects of the journey. People move seamlessly across screens and channels. Does your brand deliver seamlessly in return? Don’t let competing internal objectives or departmental silos stand in the way; anchor your action to the consumer and organize around their moments.

Ask: "Is our journey optimized for search?" How do consumers across all the different social channels interact with your sites? Are they optimized correctly?

5)  Now keep the momentum rolling: measure every moment that matters and iterate. Keep improving your content based on what you find; then measure and iterate again.

You can't afford to under-serve your customers while you deal with measurement gaps. Even if the return on investment (ROI) for certain moments may not be directly measurable (yet), train your team to use credible estimates to ensure nothing’s falling through the cracks. 

We’ll leave you with these questions:

  1. Are you ready for the moments ahead? 
  2. Can users consume your content (or a form of it) in the queue at Starbucks?
  3. How are you capitalizing on seasonal macro-moments like the Rugby World Cup or the upcoming Summer Olympic games?

If you take the time to think about your customers, find their micro- and macro-moments, and then fill their needs in those moments, you'll be well on your way. And in fact, you'll likely be getting a leg up on the competition.

Think with Google recently published a research study that takes a deep dive into micro-moments, it's a great follow up to this blog series. Download your copy today, and win the shift to mobile.

Posted By: Chris Jones, Audience Development Specialist


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  • Buddy Moments, when friends connect and bond everything they see, hear or read -- whether that's a live concert or a funny cat video on YouTube.




  • Deep Knowledge Moments, when someone wants to learn deeply about a topic (maybe political issues or financial news) so they can share that knowledge later.


In essence, micro-moments happen on the go and with intent, while macro-moments are more tribal or community-based. They're deep-dive media experiences that impact individuals in ways micro-moments can’t.

Publishers should remember that preferences and loyalty are shaped by both micro and macro moments. The brands that do the best job of addressing our needs in each moment will gain the greater share of our attention, and they'll be the publishers we start with next time. They will, in short, win.

Where to begin? 

 Determining the right macro moment to target a user is no easy feat, but here are some Google tools that can help you discover what your audience is looking for, set your strategy and start taking action.

Google Trends 
What are the biggest events coming up this year? When do searches spike for football or flowers? The Google Trends tool uses real-time search data to help you gauge consumer search behaviors over time. Find out more »

YouTube Trends 
The world's largest video site has a lot of content and a lot of users. The YouTube Dashboard lets you track what's being viewed and shared all over. Compare trending videos by age, gender and location, and see what the world's watching. Find out more »

Google Consumer Surveys 
This fast and affordable market research tool lets you ask questions to Internet and mobile users on high-quality content around the Web. Users who answer the survey gain access to content or get credits they can use for music, apps and more. Google aggregates and analyzes their responses, so you can make more informed business decisions. Find out more »

Marketer's Almanac
From the Super Bowl kickoff to holiday gift giving, each year has trends and events that create huge opportunities to connect with consumers. The Google Marketer's Almanac offers data and insights for these key moments to help you get a jump on planning. Find out more »

And as always, some of your best insights can come from good old-fashioned methods like talking to and engaging with your audience.

Once you have the insights, it's time for action. We'll cover that in our next post.

Posted by:

Chris Jones
Global Audience Development Specialist

For a long time, we've all heard that we're perched on the edge of a new golden age of digital, like divers on a cliff.

By now it seems clear that we have well and truly jumped off that edge and are swimming, frolicking (and sometimes drowning) in that futuristic sea of digital, connectivity, cams, drones, the Internet of Things… and especially mobile.

Today, we'd like to kick off a three-part blog series that will look at how publishers can do more frolicking and less failing in this digital sea. In particular, we'll look at what we call digital moments that matter, and the best ways for publishers to think about those moments. Part one today is Micro-Moments for Publishers, to be followed by From Micro to Macro and then part 3, Acting On Your Moments.

Where to start? In an age where people create and consume their very own newsrooms on a daily basis, expectations for content are growing higher and higher. Just a few examples:


So the publishing business has changed tremendously over the last two decades, but the big questions are still very much the same:

Today you have more choice than ever in how to approach these questions, thanks in large part to huge changes in mobile consumer behavior.

We don’t 'go online' 
anymore – we
live online

There's no such thing as sitting down for an “online session” anymore. Mobile is not just a hand-held device; it is a human and consumer behavior. It's why we no longer have those empty spaces in our day -- at the bus stop, in line at a store, or even at night in bed.


As a publisher, you don't always have to be there for those moments when users browse their friends' photos and status updates, or find out that they need to pick up milk on the way home from work. In fact, if you try to insert your content when people aren’t receptive, it can do more harm than good.

But certain moments really do matter for publishers: Moments when consumers turn to their phones to seek information or ideas. In those moments they have an intent: a need that can be met, a curiosity fulfilled, or a decision made.

These countless moments are full of intent signals that publishers can capitalize on. A "time for a new one" moment with a worn-out hairdryer can be satisfied with a product review. An "I can fix it" moment is perfect for do-it-yourself articles from publishers. (Over 100 million hours of “how-to” content have been watched on YouTube so far this year.) What about “I want to watch” moments? Can you give those users short and easy-to-watch content?


"How do I reach my audience?" "How do I make sure I stand out?" The answer lies in creating the content for these micro-moments. And in the next post, we'll talk about an opportunity that's similar and yet different: macro moments.

Want to learn more about micro-moments? Check out the Think with Google Guide to Winning the Shift to Mobile.

Chris Jones
Global Audience Development Specialist


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Last year we launched Matched content to help increase user engagement on your site by promoting relevant content from your site to your visitors, which may help grow your ad business as well. Starting today, you can use Matched content units to directly generate revenue by allowing ads to appear alongside your recommended content.

Matched content with content recommendations and ads

With the new “Allow ads” feature, relevant ads will appear within your Matched content units, and will be styled to complement the look and feel of your content recommendations. We'll gradually roll this feature out to all Matched content eligible publishers across the globe over the coming weeks. To enable ads, visit your My ads tab and choose “Allow ads” for your Matched content units.


Matched content is available for sites with multiple pages with unique images and high volumes of traffic. Have a look at the site management settings in your account to see if your sites are eligible and to get started with Matched content. Matched content units don’t count towards your Google content ad limit per page - to get the most out of this new tool, check the best practices in the AdSense Help Center.

As always, we'd love to hear your thoughts about this new feature in the comments section below.



 Posted by Tobias Maurer, Product Manager
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Editor's note: This post was cross posted from the Google Webmaster Central Blog.
As a form of online marketing, some companies today will send bloggers free products to review or give away in return for a mention in a blogpost. Whether you’re the company supplying the product or the blogger writing the post, below are a few best practices to ensure that this content is both useful to users and compliant with Google Webmaster Guidelines.
1. Use the nofollow tag where appropriate
Links that pass PageRank in exchange for goods or services are against Google guidelines on link schemes. Companies sometimes urge bloggers to link back to:
    a. the company’s site
    b. the company’s social media accounts
    c. an online merchant’s page that sells the product
    d. a review service’s page featuring reviews of the product
    e. the company’s mobile app on an app store
Bloggers should use the nofollow tag on all such links because these links didn’t come about organically (i.e., the links wouldn’t exist if the company hadn’t offered to provide a free good or service in exchange for a link). Companies, or the marketing firms they’re working with, can do their part by reminding bloggers to use nofollow on these links.

2. Disclose the relationship
Users want to know when they’re viewing sponsored content. Also, there are laws in some countries that make disclosure of sponsorship mandatory. A disclosure can appear anywhere in the post; however, the most useful placement is at the top in case users don’t read the entire post.

3. Create compelling, unique content
The most successful blogs offer their visitors a compelling reason to come back. If you're a blogger you might try to become the go-to source of information in your topic area, cover a useful niche that few others are looking at, or provide exclusive content that only you can create due to your unique expertise or resources.

For more information, please drop by our Google Webmaster Central Help Forum.

Posted by the Google Webspam Team

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We hope these recommendations are improving your site or apps ad viewability. Feel free to share your viewability success story in the comments section below.

Posted by Anish Kattukaran 
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We hope these recommendations are improving your site or apps ad viewability. Feel free to share your viewability success story in the comments section below.

In the next part of our Spotlight on Viewability, we'll share 3 content and ad loading methods that can improve viewability.

Posted by Anish Kattukaran 
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One of the first things to consider is: have your overall page views gone down, or are other issues causing the drop? There are many factors that affect revenue, but the key ones to look at include:
You can view all these metrics on the Performance reports tab in your AdSense account. Here are a few tips on how to address issues you may discover.

 1. My page views have decreased

When troubleshooting changes in page views, it's a good idea to extend the date range of your reports out to 30 days or more to help identify trends or specific issues. A drop in page views could simply be seasonal; retailers, for instance, tend to see a traffic drop after the holiday season. But a decrease can also be due to a change in your content.

If your traffic has dropped, here are some ways you might increase it:


2. My cost per click has decreased

 CPC is market-driven and depends on factors like advertiser bids on keywords and the CPC values they're willing to pay. For example, CPC can fall at the beginning of each quarter when marketers are shifting budget. When looking at changes in CPC, it's a good practice to extend the date range of your reports out to a year. Then:


3. My search rank has dropped

 Deeper investigation may show you that your page is not ranked as highly in search results as it once was. The Webmaster Troubleshooter is designed to help you resolve common issues with your site in Google Search and the Google Search Console.

4. My CTR or page RPM has decreased

A drop in CTR or page RPM can be caused by confusing site design or poor targeting. Visitors who see your ads might not click on them because they find them irrelevant, or perhaps they don't see your ads at all. And that leads to lower earnings.

Here are some best practices to help drive up your CTR and page RPM:


We hope these tips will help you understand exactly what's happening on your site ― and send your earnings back in the right direction.



Posted by Rachel Barrett
Google AdSense Team
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We hope these recommendations are improving your site or apps ad viewability. Feel free to share your viewability success story in the comments section below.

In the next part of our Spotlight on Viewability, we'll share 4 ways to improve ad layouts for better viewability rates.

Posted by Anish Kattukaran,
Product Marketing Manager
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We hope these recommendations will improve your site or apps ad viewability. Feel free to share your viewability success story in the comments section below. 

In the next part of our Spotlight on Viewability, we'll share 3 speedy ways to improve viewability.

Posted by Anish Kattukaran,
Product Marketing Manager

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The infographic covers how to:
  • Enable viewability measurement
  • Optimize for speed and responsiveness
  • Lay out ads for optimal viewability
  • Load ads and content for optimal viewability
Publishers and app developers across the globe have been able to seamlessly measure viewability, at no additional charge, with the launch of Google’s Active View technology in DoubleClick for Publishers, DoubleClick Ad Exchange, AdSense and AdMob. The tips in the viewability spotlight infographic can help you go beyond simply understanding viewability rates to optimizing viewability on your site or app so that all of your impressions are viewable.

These insights and recommendations come from our services teams that have spent thousands of hours working with publishers and developers to improve advertising outcomes.

Download your copy of the viewability spotlight infographic now.

Posted by Anish Kattukaran, Product Marketing Manager


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